Hangover cures

There’s a fine line between making merry and feeling beautiful and wild and free, and beautifully and freely projectile-chucking onto your bedroom rug. Or someone else’s bedroom rug.

Mookychick Central has come up with a few things before, during and after a night of drinking to minimise the possible damage to your body and pride.

The night before

Don’t go out on an empty stomach. Something full of starches, and stocked with essential minerals if poss, is ideal. A bag of chips before the pub will moderate the absorption of alcohol into your bloodstream, but not so much that you’ll feel you wasted your money on the booze. The reason that food is so important is because it’ll sop up the alcohol so that it doesn’t all go directly into the bloodstream.

Choose your booze with care. There are poisons besides alcohol itself that contribute to a brutal hangover. Nasty chemicals called congeners occur naturally in all fermented drinks. The general rule is that darker drinks, such as red wine, bourbon, scotch, and brandy have more congeners than lighter drinks like white wine, vodka, and gin. But you should also keep in mind that whatever your drink’s color, the cheaper it is, the more poison will be in it. So avoid the cheap sauce. One further note: as well as congeners, red wine contains an extra hangover-inducing poison all of its own called tyramine. So be especially careful with cheap red wine.

Don’t mix your drinks! That means grape and grain, or wine and spirits. A good non-fattening drink to stick to is vodka with water and lime cordial, because at least you’re having a glass of water with every measure. Too many Jack and cokes and you’ll be feeling the nasty effects of coke as well as Mister Daniels. Everyone has arcane theories about which drinks can be mixed, but pick one thing and try to stick to it.

Alcohol dehydrates you. Also, remember that alcohol acts as a diuretic and makes you wee, so any water you’ve put into yourself before drinking will come out pretty fast. Have a glass of water before you go out. Make sure you drink a couple of glasses of water before you go to bed. It will really help the next day! And then, before you crash, put another glass of water next to your bed. You never know when you might need it – even if you feel unable to move at the time.

Have a pee before you go to bed. That’ll save you one trip to the bathroom, anyway.

Don’t bother taking aspirin or paracetamol at this stage. Your headache won’t have arrived yet, and it’s not a good idea. Aspirin upsets the stomach and aggravates the symptoms of a hangover. If you want to take a pill, a multivitamin might help by replenishing some of the B vitamins you’ve pissed away during the course of the evening.

The morning after

Water

Your body might have been 90% water before you went out but it will feel like 20% in the morning. If you had a couple of glasses of water before you went to bed, you won’t feel so awful in the morning. Otherwise, get up, drink as much as you can, then go back to bed. That’s far better than trying to stay in bed and feeling worse with every minute. Five minutes after you’ve drunk the water your mouth will be parch dry again and ready for more. Two minutes if you smoked ciggies.

If you’re feeling really terrible, try drinking the following:

• Fizzy pop. Coca cola and the like have sugar as well as water, which will make you feel better – as will all the gassy bubbles. The reason sugar is good is that your body uses sugar to break down alcohol, and you got rid of all the essential sugar in your body the night before. If you’re feeling really ill, the fizzy pop may be easier to keep down than water.
• Foreign Legion juice. We don’t know why it’s called this, but it’s a pint glass of water, 8 teaspoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt. Don’t skimp on the salt – it won’t taste as bad as you think! It’s not just water you lose through drinking but essential sugars and salts, too, so this will give you a fighting chance.

Exercise

Snowboarders and the like are famous for drinking in the evening and boarding the next morning. The exercise boosts adrenalin, which clears the system, and pumps the blood around the body faster, so you’re getting rid of those toxins. At the very least try a nice walk to the shop and back, even if you don’t feel quite ready. If the ‘sun’ hurts your eyes, sunglasses on a grey day are allowed.

It’s good to exercise on a semi-regular basis. Fit people metabolise alcohol faster and enjoy a smoother flow of oxygen to the brain. They still get hangovers, just not as bad.

Beauty tip: Combat puffy eyes

• Common causes of eye-puff are lack of sleep and too much alcohol.
• If you’re feeling glamorous like the Queen of Sheba you can apply a cold compress (cotton wool pad soaked in water) until the area depuffs.
• Increase your intake of fluids to rehydrate the skin.
• Topical vitamin K is often found in eye and face creams nowadays (combined with vitamin A) and it’s good reducing under-eye circles as well as bruises.
• Don’t use concealer that day unless you need to because it weighs on the skin around the eyes.

Beauty tip: We think this is expensive and crazy and wouldn’t do it ourselves in a million years, but apparently washing your face with mineral water helps skin cells absorb the moisture better.