There’s no need to begin the new year with a hangover. Here’s what experts say you can do to keep a hangover at bay while you celebrate the birth of 2023.
Toasting the birth of the new year is an age-old ritual, and for many, so is that dreaded morning aftermath — a hangover.
What seemed like great fun at the time is now causing your hands to shake, your head to pound and your heart to race, not to mention other unpleasant symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity and excruciating thirst.
Why are you suffering? Because the liquor that smoothly passed your lips is now wreaking havoc in your body, causing dehydration, stomach distress and inflammation. These ailments peak about the time all the alcohol leaves your body.
There is no scientifically proven way to cure a hangover, but experts say you can prevent one — or at least keep that morning-after misery to a minimum. Here’s how.
Forget a late-night meal after a night of drinking — that’s much too late, experts say. Instead, eat before your first drink and keep noshing as the night goes on.
“Food in the stomach slows gastric emptying and can reduce hangover symptoms,” said Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.
Why does food help? Because alcohol isn’t metabolized by the stomach but via the intestinal tract just below it, Swift said.
“If somebody does shots on an empty stomach, for example, all that pure alcohol is not diluted by the stomach and is passed to the intestine very quickly,” said Swift, who has studied alcohol abuse since the 1990s.
“If the stomach contains food, however, there are gastric juices and enzymes that mix the food and the alcohol, and only small amounts of food are passed into the intestine,” he said. “Now the alcohol is diluted in the stomach, and only a small quantity of alcohol is absorbed at any time.
