Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Preventing A Hangover

It is the holiday season, which means lots of holiday parties and, inevitably, these parties involve a good bit of drinking. This article covers everything you need to know about preventing a hangover from causes to prevention and cures.

Causes:

• toxin build up
• reactions to chemical by-products of fermentation
• individual genetics

Not all drinks are hangover-equal:

• some have higher alcohol levels than others
• congeners can worsen or lengthen hangovers

Prevention:

• avoid the buildup of chemicals that promote hangover symptoms
• drink within your personal limits
• drink more water than usual to prevent dehydration
• drinking more slowly
• drinking after or while eating

Cures:

• no universally agreed-upon cure

For those of you who have ever had a bad hangover – that dreaded combination of headache, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, and general irritability – after a night of overindulgence (don’t worry, we’re not judging), the only solace you’ve likely had is that you’re in good company. American humorist and actor Robert Charles Benchley probably best summed up our collective experience with hangovers when he said, “The only cure for a real hangover is death.”

Mankind has probably been searching for a hangover cure since the discovery of alcoholic fermentation. Despite having a few centuries under our belts to try and figure this one out, it will probably come as little surprise (and even less comfort) to know that we’ve yet to develop a surefire hangover cure that is guaranteed to work for everyone.

But human beings are nothing if not stubbornly persistent in their desire to have their cake (booze) and eat it, too (sans hangover). As a result, science has been making some promising – and fascinating – headway into understanding why we get hangovers, what drinks are more likely to cause them, and what we can do to help prevent them, or lessen their impact. Here are some interesting insights about hangovers that are the result, not of homegrown superstitions, but of bona fide scientific study.

Read full article here.