What to drink before drinking alcohol to avoid hangover

What is a hangover and what are the symptoms?

Hangovers vary from person to person, but usually involve a headache, nausea, tiredness and dehydration. Dehydration is one of the main causes of your hangover symptoms.

A hangover can leave you struggling to concentrate, feeling irritable and sensitive to light – not a good combination if you were planning to make the most of the day and not spend it in bed.

The main cause of a hangover is the effect of ethanol – the alcohol in your drinks.

It's a toxic chemical that works in the body as a diuretic, which means it makes you pee more and you can become dehydrated as a result. 

How to prevent a hangover

• To avoid recurrence of hangovers, keep track of what you're drinking and stay within the low risk drinking guidelines by not regularly drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week. If you do choose to drink as much as this, spread your drinking evenly over three or more days and take several drink-free days during the week. The Drinkaware app can help you keep track how much you're drinking in terms of units and provide support to help you cut down.

• Avoid alcohol on an empty stomach as it increases the risk of experiencing hangover symptoms. Food helps slow down the rate your body absorbs alcohol.

• Try not to get into rounds. They make it harder to control how much you drink.

• Drink plenty of water or soft drinks in between alcoholic drinks to avoid dehydration, one of the main causes of a hangover.

• Depending on your weight and other factors, it takes about one hour for a healthy liver to process a unit of alcohol. Consider stopping drinking well before the end of the evening, so the process can begin before you go to bed.

• Drink plenty of water before going to sleep and keep a glass by the bed.

Tips to cut down how much you drink

How can you cure a hangover?

• The only hangover cure is prevention, either through drinking moderately, or not at all.
• Drink plenty of water and if you really need it, take a painkiller and an antacid to settle your stomach. You could also try a rehydration treatment sachet – they replace lost minerals and salt.
• Avoid hair of the dog – it only delays the problem. And routine ‘hair of the dog’ drinking can lead to increased tolerance of alcohol and this could lead to alcohol dependence. 

Written by Jeff D

As much as we hate to admit it, alcohol has become a part of our everyday life. We drink when we are happy, we drink when we are sad, we drink when we are stressed; we have a reason for every time that we want to grab that cocktail mixing glass and start making our own cocktail to enjoy throughout the night. Cocktails are a deviation to conventional alcoholic drinks such as beer, whiskey, rum and other drinks that you can take by themselves.

Hangover: how to avoid it

Hangover comes with the territory of consuming alcoholic drinks. If you drink too much, expect to wake up to a splitting headache the next morning, which may last well into the day. If you keep a cocktail mixing set in your kitchen cupboard for nights in with your favorite concoction, chances are you have woken up too many times hung over. But you can still enjoy liquor without the accompanying hangover. Methanol is a congener, and is present in most, if not all, alcoholic drinks. Those with high levels of congeners have been known to cause hangover than those with lower levels of methanol. Tequila, cognac and whiskey are three drinks that have high levels of congeners. Colorless drinks such as gin and vodka have lower levels of methanol. If you don’t want to wake up with a hangover, you might want to read the label on the bottle to see if it contains a high level of congener.

The best cocktails with no hangover

If you can’t give up alcohol to avoid hangovers, here is a list of cocktails that won’t give you any.

• Vodka soda. Since soda contains little to no congeners, it is the best type of alcohol to mix. Pour a good amount of soda water that has no sugar, and you will wake up the next morning with literally no regrets of the night that was.
• Sea breeze. Take out your cocktail glass and prepare fresh grapefruit juice and cranberry juice to mix with your trusty vodka, and you can drink this concoction into the wee hours of the early morning. You will wake up feeling like you had a good night in.
• A gin martini, which contains little congeners, has no sugar, so you will avoid the dreaded artificial sugar that is present in a lot of alcoholic drinks. A trickle of dry vermouth, lemon peel and olive with the right amount of gin and you’re good to go.
• Gin and tonic. It is a classic cocktail drink that never goes out of style, mostly because it doesn’t give you hangovers. Keep in mind though, that tonic has a good amount of sodium, so expect a little bloating in the morning, but the lack of sugar in gin and tonic will give you that hangover-free morning after.

The holiday season is the worst time for your liver. Parties left and right will not give you much choice but to drink, so drink wisely. Choose the ones that will give you a clear head in the morning.

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