What is the best hangover cure? Drinking in moderation in the first place might be the answer, but when moderation isn’t possible or an option, getting hangover cures that work is the next best thing.
Here are some homemade recipes to cure a hangover.
Fruit juice contains fructose, a form of sugar that helps the body burn alcohol faster, which helps speed up the elimination of any remaining alcohol in your body. Therefore, drinking a large glass of apple juice or tomato juice removes alcohol from your body and helps you recover from a hangover faster. Orange juice is more acidic and if you have a weak stomach, it’s best to stick to non-acidic juices.
In addition, fruit juices contain high levels of vitamins and nutrients that help replenish the body’s energy and flush alcohol toxins out of the body faster.
Honey is a concentrated form of fructose, so eating crackers and honey helps too. Another way to take honey is to take it with lemon and hot water. This is the classic drink to cure a hangover. A hot lemon and honey drink not only replenishes lost fluids from the body, but also prevents the rapid change in alcohol levels that causes headaches.
Alcohol dehydrates the body, so drinking plenty of water before you go to sleep and after you get up in the morning helps relieve discomfort caused by alcoholic dehydration. Replenish the water supply in your body.
Eggs contain cysteine, a substance that breaks down acetaldehyde, the toxin that causes hangovers. The liver contains glutathione which is easily depleted by acetaldehyde and eating eggs helps absorb this toxin. Also, eggs give you energy in the morning.
Replenishing potassium lost from alcohol’s diuretic effect is a recommended hangover cure. Broth made from bouillon cubes or any homemade soup stock helps replace the salt and potassium your body loses when you drink. Bananas also contain high levels of potassium. You can also have a kiwi juice or sports drink.
Usually used as a remedy for motion sickness, ginger also works for hangovers as having a hangover is quite similar to being dizzy. If you can, make some ginger tea by cutting about 10 slices of fresh ginger and boiling it with 4 cups of water for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, drain and add half a cup of honey, juice of half a lemon, and orange juice to ginger tea for a delicious hangover cure.
Here are some effective hangover cures you can try, but there are many more hangover recipes out there, some of which are more myth than fact. Some will actually give you temporary hangover relief before the hangover gets worse.
These include drinking more alcohol in the morning, eating burnt toast, and drinking black coffee.
Drinking more alcohol would load your body with even more alcohol toxins when your body is already struggling to get rid of the toxins from the night before. The burnt toast is supposed to act as a charcoal filter that absorbs toxins, as charcoal is used to treat alcohol poisoning. The charcoal in burnt toast is not the same as the charcoal used to treat alcohol poisoning. Coffee, like alcohol, is also a diuretic and causes the body to lose even more water and become even more dehydrated.
At the end of the day, moderation in alcohol consumption is still key to reducing hangover symptoms, as hangover cures may not work for some people.