Here are some rules to live by, when you have a night out!

 BEFORE YOUR FIRST DRINK:

Eat: Anything chocked full of vitamins. Bananas, Apples, Whole grains. The alcohol is a toxin, and will  rape your body of important vitamins.  Please give your body a fighting chance. Call in the reserves.

Drink: Water that is. Alcohol will also suck you dry, so go into the party well hydrated.

WHILE YOU ARE DRINKING:

Try, try, try.... To keep hydrated. Here's an idea, when your buddies are bellying up to the bar for a shot of tequila, order yours with a water chaser. Always have a glass of water in front of you, even a sip every half hour will reduce the after effects.

Beer is the "better of two evils." Beer has less alcohol than wine or whiskey, and is 98% water. If you must hit the hard stuff, then try something clear. Clear alcohols like vodka or gin are known to have less toxin's than drinks like whiskey.

Eat Again. Try to have another meal before you go to sleep. Heck, I would even go as far to say you should have a glass of WATER with that meal. This meal will slow down the absorption of alcohol into your bloodstream.

The moral of this post is to stay hydrated, give back what alcohol takes away, and slow the flow of toxin's into your body. If you still feel like a big piece of poopy when you wake up, then just imagine how much worse it could have been.

Till next time,

CGC

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_acocella

For those of you who are too lazy to actually click on a link and read a whole article, I’ve paraphrased and plagiarized some of it here. Most of my friends will find immediate use for the insights and tips included here, so I couldn’t bear to leave any of you in the dark.

           First, of course, we have to go over the science of hangovers. When you drink enough to see the world through the happy lens of alcoholic cheer, several things are going on chemically. First, alcohol interferes with the secretion of the hormone that inhibits urination, so you pee a lot, and get dehydrated, which makes you thirsty. You know how that vicious cycle goes. Alcohol also induces hypoglycemia (low blood sugar… which is odd, since alcoholics usually have high blood sugar, and drink is basically composed of simple carbohydrates and nothing else), so your hangover may be tinged with light-headedness and weakness (in the knees and everywhere else). As the liver breaks down the alcohol, it produces toxins which are more toxic than the alcohol itself, which cause the nausea and further delights you discover upon waking the next morning, and which characterize that state Poles call a “howling of kittens”. Finally, the alcohol has produced inflammation, which causes the white blood cells to flood the blood-stream with molecules called cytokines, which are responsible for making you feel achy and exhausted, regardless of whether they’re in your bloodstream because of the regular flu or the bottle flu.

          How severe your hangover – or, as the Danes say, your “carpenter in the forehead”- is depends not only on how much you drank, but what you drank, your genes, how often you drink heavily and what else you consumed the night before. Drinks with higher levels of congeners – impurities either added or naturally occurring, which make the alcohol look darker, like red wine, whiskey and stout beer – add to the howling of the kittens. To lessen your “wooden throat” (France), steer toward white wine, gin and vodka. And if you’re seriously dedicated to calming the “stoned Rastafarian trying to split your coconut” (Jamaica, why do you ask?); drink more. Its true that heavy drinkers suffer lesser hangovers (this tends to piss off the most righteous of the tee-totalers, but I suspect its just a sign of Saint Stupid at work). Increasing one’s overall alcoholic intake may not be an option for some forty percent of East Asians and Jews, who carry a less efficient variant of the gene which creates aldehyde dehydrogenase, an enzyme necessary for breaking down alcohol. They get plowed faster than we do. Perhaps that’s why the Korean term for a hangover is “a water buffalo plowing in my head.” Perhaps not.

          Once you’re in the pickle created by getting pickled, there are as many remedies as there are drunks. Russians drink pickle juice (with or without a shot of vodka), which doesn’t work without the vodka, I’m happy to be able to report. The pickle juice will distract you, it will provide a placebo effect, it might calm your stomach, but in the end it’s a diuretic, so it will make you more dehydrated than before. The hair-of-the-dog does work because the liver first goes about breaking down the ethanol and then moves on to the methanol, which is a secondary ingredient in many spirits and wines. Methanol breaks down into formic acid, which is highly toxic.  This is the stage in which we feel most grievous. If you add more alcohol now, the liver goes back to work on a new supply of ethanol, and stops adding formic acid to the mix.  Granted, there’s now more methanol and thus formic acid for you to deal with, but it delays the worst symptoms. Grab a Bloody Mary or a mimosa, both of which provide low-congener ethanol, liquids and a few vitamins.

          Other cures, like the greasy meal cure (go have breakfast at Dennys!), eating two McDonalds hamburgers (thought to contain a secret ingredient for hangovers),  spicy foods, eggs, prairie oysters (vinegar, raw egg and Worcestershire sauce), sugar, Irn Bru (Scotland’s other  national drink specifically formulated for hangovers and which is said to taste like warm plastic), milk, milkshakes, smoothies, buttermilk (also said to soothe when poured over the head), pickled herring, pickled plum, cumin seeds, coca leaves all work, not entirely by power of suggestion. They share the benefit of the hair-of-the-dog, insofar as the liver slows down breaking down methanol and turns to new alimentary tasks, but mostly these other remedies make you thirsty so you drink more water. Lab tests have proven some efficacy for some cures: milk thistle extract seems to protect cells from damage from alcohol. Prickly pear extract has proven to provide relief from nausea, dry mouth and food aversion, but not with the other symptoms such as headache, for which you’ll need aspirin (don’t use Tylenol –acetaminophen - because alcohol increases its toxicity to the liver). The OTC products NoHang and Hangover Helper have milk-thistle extract in them.  Of course the ultimate way to prevent “the surf in the sea” (Spain) is to abstain, but don’t forget that you might be denying the world of the next great alcoholic genius. Where would we be with out William Faulkner, Kingsley Amis, Ulysses S. Grant, John Barrymore, Isadora Duncan or Dorothy Parker?  Are you sure you’re reaching your full potential?

Vitamin up: Vitamin C in large doses can help the body normalize itself, likewise citrus juice which is high in Vitamin C is beneficial. Orange juice and grapefruit or tomato juice are usually in the fridge, or can be easily gotten from the store. Maybe this is one of the reasons that cold pizza is legend in it's ability to ease hangover symptoms.

Essential oils may help. A drop of the following oils: fennel, grapefruit, lavender, lemon, rose, rosemary or sandalwood taken with a spoon of Blue Agave (available at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods) or Honey will immediately have a rejuvenating effect. Peppermint oil behind the ears (sounds weird but it's true) will naturally chase away headache symptoms like magic and a drop of peppermint in some water is very soothing to the stomach. A drop of therapeutic-grade peppermint has the properties of 28 cups of peppermint tea,

Bananas or Gatorade. These provide a quick hit of sugar in the form of fructose, which is easily digestible, and potassium, which are lost when you drink too much alcohol. Bananas help with the nausea, and are high in magnesium which can help headache symptoms. Maybe this is why Elvis was so into peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Try some coffee? To ease a hangover coffee should be fortified with honey because fructose is easier to digest than table sugar (sucrose).

Other suggestions abound on the internet. For best results though nutrition and time are the best healers. By fortifying the body with Vitamin C rich solutions and quelling nausea with Peppermint, the hangover will soon be a distant memory.

I kept that handwritten request and made good use of it over the next few months. The same crumpled piece of paper was presented to a succession of spotty teenagers in convenience stores that year. In fact, it is still stuck to my pin-board, withered, faded and brown.

The Japanese are renowned for drinking heavily, and they have their own unique expression for "hangover": "futsukayoi", which means "drunk for two days." You might like to exaggerate the level of your hangover by saying "mikkayoi" (drunk for three days) or "yokkayoi" (drunk for four days) etc.
Since businessmen are expected to get utterly trashed with their boss on a regular basis, there are plenty of hangover cures readily available in the shops of Japan.
What I was usually given by the convenience store staff were "genki drinks". These are small, 100ml glass bottles of various potions which relieve all kinds of different medical complaints, from colds to loss of libido and, of course, hangovers.
Look out for the two bottles pictured below. They're very effective at stopping booze-induced gut-rot, nausea and puking. A few minutes after necking one of these magic mixtures you'll be bouncing around like Super Mario:

The sickly concoction pictured below is called Lipovitan D, and it was the inspiration for Redbull. It relieves physical fatigue and gives you boundless energy, but corrodes your esophagus like battery acid. (Having said that, I'm partial to the occasional Vodka and Lipovitan D cocktail at parties- guaranteed to give you the endurance and stamina of a Terminator, and make you equally as destructive.)

A popular pre-emptive hangover cure is to make a ramen shop your last port of call after a pub crawl. Gulping down a steaming bowl of ramen noodles before you hit the sack will nip your hangover in the bud.
Another age-old Japanese remedy is the humble miso soup. The nation's favourite soup can be bought at most cheap cafes and restaurants for a couple of hundred yen, and seems to soothe the stomach and head in times of need.

Mari at Watashi to Tokyo endorses the miso method, and also recommends drinking green tea, eating grated daikon, or pushing pressure points.

I find that the amusingly-named sports drink "Pocari Sweat" makes you feel slightly less god-awful in the mornings by re-hydrating you and replacing lost sweat (hence the grotesque name). This is particularly effective if you've spent the whole night thrashing around on a dance-floor in a Tokyo nightclub.

The fruit, "Kaki" (persimmon) is considered a hangover cure in Japan. According to Metropolis magazine, their "combo of fructose, vitamins A and C and minerals is the secret". The vitamins help metabolize the booze and break down the nasty toxins. Chomp on a kaki in the morning, and it will have the same effect as spinach has on Popeye.

Another natural remedy is kudzu, which is a kind of vine in the pea family. Powdered kudzu root has been an ingredient in traditional Japanese hangover cures for centuries. Desperate alkies take note- kudzu also suppresses cravings for booze.

Umeboshi pickled plums are also thought to relieve the morning-after problems. The pyric acid in umeboshi breaks down the booze in your body, settles your mangled stomach, and breathes life into your liver.
Asylum.com has some useful advice on post-piss-up umeboshi-munching: "For a normal hangover, bite off about a quarter of a plum and keep it in your mouth until it dissolves. For a whopper hangover, herbalists recommend popping a whole plum into your mouth. Continue to suck on it for about an hour after the plum has dissolved."

The website What Japan Thinks conducted a survey of Japanese people to find their preferred hangover cures. The internationally accepted technique of drinking water topped the list, and sleeping came second. So, the familiar methods still seem to be the most reliable.

For the last couple of years I haven't needed any of these remedies, though, because I take "ukon" before I go out drinking. Ukon is a miraculous turmeric supplement pill that you take before boozing, and it stops you getting a hangover. You could guzzle down a litre of whiskey and still wake up feeling as fresh as a daisy. Invaluable!

Anyway, as everyone knows, the best thing for a hangover is drinking heavily the night before, so I'm now going out to do just that.

DEPRESSION: A recent survey undertaken by MIND,people suffering from depression felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan,a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin,known to make you relax,improve your mood and make you feel happier.

PMS:Forget the pills,the vitamin B6 a banana contains regulates blood glucose levels,which can effect your mood.

ANEMIA: High in iron,bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.

BLOOD PRESSURE: This fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt so it is perfect to beat blood pressure.

BRAIN POWER: This potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making you more alert.

CONSTIPATION: High in fiber,the banana can help restore normal bowel action without having to resort to laxatives.

HANGOVERS: One quick way to cure a hangover is to make yourself a banana milkshake sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach,the honey builds up depleted blood sugar levels while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

HEARTBURN: The banana has a natural antacid effect in the body,so if you suffer from heartburn,eat a banana for soothing relief.

NERVES: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.

ULCERS: The banana neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

STRESS: Potassium is a vital mineral which helps normalize the heartbeat,sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. Stress reduces potassium levels,bounce them back up with a banana snack.

STROKES: According to The New England Journal of Medicine,eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%.

Now for the "banana and the shoe": Shoes looking a little down and out? Take the inside of the banana skin,rub it directly on the shoe and polish with a dry cloth.

- Nicole Pasulka from Hangover Cures.

Who hasn't had the feeling of "near death" the morning after a hard night of drinking?  And then that's when your mind, moving as fast as it can (meaning about 2 MPH), tries to remember what cures a hangover. 

That's why I thought this story in Newsweek was interesting.  It says that hangovers can't really be cured.   Their recommendations to help ease the hangover are not new -- take an aspirin, drink water/coffee/juice, eat something, sleep, etc.  But they do tell us that the "hangover cures" that are sold in stores usually don't do much. 

One interesting factoid -- the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States says the $58 billion distilled-spirits industry makes about 25 percent of its profits between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

What hangover cures do you employ?  Feel free to add submit (anonymously if you'd like) to the comments section.