When hungover, focus on rehydrating and replenishing nutrients with bland carbs (toast, crackers), potassium-rich foods (bananas, avocado, coconut water), lean proteins (eggs, chicken, salmon) for amino acids, and ginger or teas to calm your stomach, while sipping water and electrolyte drinks to combat dehydration.
Eat bland foods with complex carbohydrates like toast or crackers. You'll boost low blood sugar levels and reduce nausea. Drink lots of fluids, including water, electrolyte beverages (Gatorade® or Pedialyte®), broth and other non-alcoholic beverages to reduce dehydration.
Treatment
Drinking sports drinks or juices containing electrolytes. Eating light but nutritional meals including fruits like bananas, high protein like salmon or chicken and other foods that will give you vitamin B, Zn and potassium. Getting enough rest. Taking over-the-counter pain medications for head or muscle aches.
' What you are feeling are the effects of dehydration and low blood sugar. To bring your blood sugar back up to normal, you really just need to eat anything with some carbs, but balance it out with protein or healthy fats to prevent further blood sugar drops,” she says.
The 1-2-3 drinking rule is a guideline for moderation: 1 drink per hour, no more than 2 drinks per occasion, and at least 3 alcohol-free days each week, helping to pace consumption and stay within safer limits. It emphasizes pacing alcohol intake with water and food, knowing standard drink sizes (12oz beer, 5oz wine, 1.5oz spirits), and avoiding daily drinking to reduce health risks, though some health guidance suggests even lower limits.
Issues that may make a hangover more likely or worse include: Drinking on an empty stomach. Having no food in your stomach speeds up how much and how fast alcohol enters the body. Using other drugs, such as nicotine, along with alcohol.
It's worth swerving refined carbs and sugary foods pre-drinking such as white bread, white pasta, sweets and fizzy soft drinks. This is because they digest very quickly, meaning that the alcohol you consume will be absorbed into your blood rapidly.
Drinking to ease the symptoms of a hangover is sometimes called taking the hair of the dog, or hair of the dog that bit you. The notion is that hangovers are a form of alcohol withdrawal, so a drink or two will ease the withdrawal. However, the hair of the dog just perpetuates a cycle. It doesn't allow you to recover.
The "20-minute rule for alcohol" is a simple strategy to moderate drinking: wait 20 minutes after finishing one alcoholic drink before starting the next, giving you time to rehydrate with water and reassess if you truly want another, often reducing cravings and overall intake. It helps slow consumption, break the chain of continuous drinking, and allows the body a natural break, making it easier to decide if you've had enough or switch to a non-alcoholic option.
“But remember, caffeine is a diuretic, which might push you to the bathroom more and worsen dehydration — a key culprit behind those dreaded hangover symptoms. Sugar in Coke offers a quick energy boost too, which could temporarily alleviate that weak, sluggish feeling.”
How to Cure a Hangover Fast
A popular theory suggests that dehydration is the primary cause of alcohol hangover. ∗ If correct, the consumption of water could alleviate hangover symptoms. This review concludes that hangover and dehydration are two co-occurring but independent consequences of alcohol consumption.
Don't make it worse
Way, way worse. Instead, opt for something like Powerade or Lucozade. These isotonic drinks are designed to replenish sugars and salts quickly, so can work wonders for that hangover.
Hangover recipes
Your body naturally begins detoxifying alcohol as soon as you stop drinking. The liver processes about one standard drink per hour. So while some may search for ways to speed things up, there's no magic juice, pill, or shortcut that can accelerate that process safely.
However, Dr. Abbasi says this is a bad idea. Having a stomach full of food at the end of the night will probably only cause you more problems. The reason – having too much alcohol causes stomach emptying to slow, which often leads to more indigestion, nausea, upset stomach, even vomiting.
Get plenty of rest. Even if you feel good the morning after heavy drinking, the lasting effects of alcohol reduce your ability to perform at your best. Avoid taking any medicines for your hangover that contain acetaminophen (such as Tylenol). Acetaminophen may cause liver damage when combined with alcohol.
They determined that being hungover can involve impairment of your cognitive functions and interfere with the normal performance of everyday tasks like driving. So, does being hungover mean you're still drunk? Not always, but it can produce the same effects — other than the fun, feel-good ones.
The 20-minute wine rule is a simple guideline to bring wines to their optimal serving temperature: put red wines in the fridge for about 20 minutes to cool slightly (as room temp is too warm), and take white wines out of the fridge for about 20 minutes to let them warm up a bit (as too cold masks flavors). This helps unlock the full aromas and flavors, as serving wines too hot or too cold mutes their complexity.
When hungover, avoid more alcohol ("hair of the dog"), caffeine (like coffee), greasy/sugary foods, strenuous activity, and driving, as these worsen dehydration, irritate your stomach, or impair you further. Instead, rehydrate with water, eat bland foods (toast, crackers), rest, and be cautious with pain relievers like acetaminophen (liver damage risk) or ibuprofen (stomach irritation).
If you do experience early symptoms of ARLD, these are often quite vague, such as:
Two fingers means a single pour. Three fingers means a double pour. Served neat in a rocks glass. It's old school.
"Heavy or excessive drinking" is defined as consuming more than four drinks a day for men and more than three drinks per day for women.