This is a guide for how to get rid of a hangover fast. If you want to get back to feeling like yourself again, and find what helps hangovers, this article will give you lots of home remedies for a hangover – you can use stuff you might find around the home right now and ideas for natural medicine that you can buy in preparation for those big nights out!
I get lots of questions from clients and friends like “Are there any natural hangover cures?” or “can Chinese medicine treat a hangover?” This article looks at what causes hangovers and hangover cures that work from a Chinese medicine perspective.
Fastest Hangover Remedies:
- Fluids
- Food
- Detox
Before we look at these in detail, lets unpack what Chinese medicine has to say about hangovers:
What causes hangovers?
Hangovers in Chinese medicine usually relate to a pattern of disharmony of toxic heat, food stagnation or a combination of dampness and heat. Basically all alcohol is somewhat heating and over-ingestion causes a toxic build up of heat. This heat stagnates and can lead to disturbance of the digestive functions (mostly the Spleen in Chinese Medicine).
3 QUICK HANGOVER REMEDIES:
- FLUIDS
Of course water is number one. Drink water, as soon as you are can. Drinking water to space out your drinks is the best hangover prevention drink.
Coconut water, Isotonic sports drinks and herbal tea, like our hangover tea are good additions to water. More about hangover tea below.
- FOODS
There are some ancient mentions of foods used as medicine for hangover, which prevent or treat drunkenness & hangovers in Chinese medical literature, the most common being watermelon and banana.
Watermelon – Eating watermelon (flesh and/or also skin) whilst having a few beers might be a novel concept, but by trading your nuts for watermelon you can have a much better chance of waking up feeling less hung-over. (Watermelon promotes urination and helps excrete the toxins of alcohol faster).
Bananas – As mentioned in the Ben Cao Gang Mu Shi Yi (1765 A.D.), Bananas act on the digestion of the Large Intestine. Essentially, they have a detoxifying effect. They help the Large Intestine, and promote the excretion of toxins. While it’s great to urinate a lot after drinking to “get all the toxins out”, this also will deplete potassium and salts in the body. 100g of banana has about 358mg of potassium. Even before the science of hangovers was known, Chinese Medicine was using bananas for conditions we now know are caused by dehydration’s effects on the body.
Why are some people are more affected by different kinds of alcohol?
To really understand how to treat a hangover, you have to go beyond just dehydration. Looking at alcohols from a Chinese Medicine perspective, we can understand that beer, wine and spirits have different proportions of heat and dampening effects on the body.
If a person is already “hot” or has the propensity for their own bodies heat (Yang energy) to easily rise up, then consuming more heating foods and fluids will only make heat rise up more. When heat rises up, you will get things like breakout of acne, redness on the skin and easily emotional especially anger, resentment and frustration are worse when heat rises up out of control.
If you already have skin conditions or acne, then heating foods and alcohol should be avoided. People with acne should at the very least stay away from spirits.
Spirits are much more warming and “hot” in nature than beers and wine. The more heat in your system the more strong the odour of the bowels, sweat and breath will be.
On the other hand, the dampening effects of alcohol are more responsible for the misty/foggy headedness that can happen in a hangover. Swelling, bloating, and diarrhoea are all symptoms of damp overwhelming your Spleen energy’s digestive functions.
Beer and grain-based alcohols cause more dampness – nausea, cloudy headed, heaviness, bloating. The over-working of the Spleen and Stomach results in depleting the Spleen function and can lead to poor digestion, bloating and diarrhoea.
Some people already have impairment or dysfunction in their body, before ingesting alcohol, which is one reason some people can only tolerate very little alcohol before getting sick.
Alcohol should always be consumed in moderation, and there are many warnings about negative effects of over-consumption in the ancient writings of Chinese Medicine. As with many foods, alcohol has a different effect on the body according to the amount consumed.
Hangover Tea
We don’t recommend drinking to excess, but if you have had a bit too much over-consumption then our Hangover tea is a good one to keep on hand for such occasions.
The herbs in Hangover tea have the properties to aid the body’s normal digestive and eliminate functions, clearing the toxic heat and dampness. Hangover Tea can be used as a hangover remedy drink, and as part of a detox diet.
Dampness and heat rising can happen from eating too much rich and greasy foods, sugary/sweet foods, or just over-eating in general. Hangover tea can be used for dampness and heat in the body from any kind of diet imbalance, you don’t have to have a literal alcohol hangover to use it.
Hangover tea acts like a digestive-detox, increasing the natural movement of the body’s digestive tubes promoting elimination and excretion.
The herbal flavour of Hangover Tea is quite strong. As the tea-creator I recommend people start with a bit less tea than the other blends in our Chinese Herbalist range, and add more if they want it a bit stronger.
If you do make a brew of Hangover tea and it tastes bitter, too strong or unpalatable for you, then tip out all the water in your pot or cup, keep the herbs there and pour on new, fresh boiling hot water and take the herbs out of the pot or cup after a minute (don’t let it steep too long). As with all our teas, you can pour hot water over the same herbs 3-5x over as long as there is still colour and flavour in your brew, your herbs are working to create an effective tea.
The festive season is a time when people tend to over-indulge in lots of ways, so Hangover tea makes a great gift for your health conscious friends, as well as a great tea to drink in between festive days over the Holidays.
There are other Chinese herbal remedies for hangovers including the use of the herb ginger. Ginger can smooth the digestive energy, sending it back down – fresh ginger tea is best for hangover nausea.
- DETOX
Chinese medicine has a pretty different view to other natural medicines about the concept of detoxing. Detoxing primarily will be purging your body via sweating, urination and/or your bowels. It’s best to seek the advice of a Chinese Medicine practitioner as to the best way to go about a detox, as many times, over the counter strong purging herbal remedies can have harsh side effects on your body.
Hangover tea can be used as a herbal detox or part of a detox diet, if your unsure about using it for your body type, you can check with your own acupuncturist or Chinese herbalist.
The best way to avoid needing to detox, is to live healthy lifestyle in the first place, using things like alcohol in moderation, this is the focus of most of Chinese medicine.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This information is provided in public interest of keeping people as healthy as possible. Common sense should always be applied. Too much of anything can be hazardous to health. This information is not intended as a substitute for medical advice or diagnosis by a health practitioner. If you have a health condition, you should check with your health care practitioner before using foods as medicine treatments like herbal teas, if you are in any way unsure about the suitability of the food agents, herbs or recipes for your body. In a medical emergency always contact emergency services, call 000 in Australia.
If your hangover symptoms persist, or you have undiagnosed symptoms you should seek medical advice.
Chinese medicine organs and some words are capitalised to indicate they are different to the biomedical understanding of the organ. In Chinese medicine each organ represents the system of function according to ancient principals of understanding, including the channel system, spiritual, mental and physical functions. The traditional understanding of Chinese medicine organs is actually a functional system often encompass many now biomedically defined aspects such as lymphatic and endocrine (hormone) functions that are attributed to that organ. A lower case letter of an organ will indicate it’s reference to the biomedical organ. EG Kidney (the Kidney functions of CM) and kidney (biomedical/physical kidney).
This article is written by Marie Hopkinson, the Chinese Herbalist & Acupuncturist at Metro Health and Medicine in North Perth. Marie is available for consultation by calling 1300 132 830 or email [email protected]
(C) Marie Hopkinson 2016 Reproduction permissible only with express permission of author.