New Year's hangover cures
YOU'RE probably reading this with a hangover. If you're lucky, you're reading it in bed. If not, you're battling through the day with nausea, a headache and a general feeling of malaise.
Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it causes dehydration, which is one of the reasons you feel so bad.
Drinking too much alcohol can also cause the blood vessels in the brain to expand and that's one of the causes of your pounding head.
While we're on how you got into this sorry state, drinking too much too fast is another no-no and downing drinks that contain large amounts of "congeners", by-products of fermentation is thought to exacerbate hangover symptoms in some people.
Generally, these are dark-coloured drinks such as red wine, brandy, and port.
Naturopath Janella Purcell, author of Elixir: how to use food as medicine, says the symptoms of a hangover are also caused by too many toxins being forced through the liver.
"They are also due to the sugar content in alcohol, which sends your blood sugar way up then crashing way down low the day after," she said.
Before we get onto how to fix the horrible way you feel, a word about preventing your current dilemma next time.
Maybe choose your drinks a bit more carefully, drink them more slowly and have a glass of water in between each drink.
If you have a non-fizzy soft drink or water between each alcoholic tipple, you'll drink less booze and ultimately have a less severe hangover. Fizzy drinks do help to speed up the amount of alcohol going into the bloodstream.
Ms Purcell also suggests avoiding pre-mixed drinks, having something substantial to eat before drinking and leaving two or three glasses of water by your bed to drink during the night of a party.
What you might not know is that alcohol is a depressant.
So if you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself today, that's part of the reason.
Now, as for cures, there are none, only time. But there's a few things that can help ease symptoms.
