New Year’s Eve is a date full of celebrations, but it can lead to excesses that pose health risks, especially in terms of alcohol abuse. What often happens is episodic binge drinking, which involves consuming many doses over a short period of time. The next day, the body recovers and the famous hangover manifests itself with symptoms such as headache and nausea. But after all, what really helps cure a hangover?
Former president of the Brazilian Society of Food and Nutrition (Sban) Sueli Longo highlights the importance of maintaining good water consumption, since alcohol causes dehydration of the body, which is the cause of many symptoms, such as intense headaches.
— In addition, if you drank a lot the day before, the liver ends up complaining a little, so the ideal is to look for lighter foods, less demanding for the body, with fruits and vegetables, which can also help — he says.
The coordinator of the Health and Alcohol Information Center (Cisa), Mariana Thibes, reminds us that there is no miracle cure for hangovers. Some may be considered, such as pain relievers to treat headaches and specific medications to control nausea. But there is no single medication designed to combat the effects of alcohol consumption.
— What they can do is treat the symptoms. The famous engov has an analgesic component, so it can slightly help with a headache, but like any other pain reliever, it will have the same effect. And it also doesn’t work to avoid a hangover by catching it in advance, the only way to avoid it is not to drink excessively – he says.
Another common hangover myth is that mixing types of alcohol, such as wine with beer, increases the risk of feeling bad the next day. However, there is no evidence of anything along these lines.
— What causes a hangover is the excess alcohol, ethanol, present in the drink. Whatever its source. What we need to remember is that some drinks contain different doses of alcohol, which can make it difficult to keep track of how many doses we are drinking. If I know that a beer has one shot, when I drink a glass, I may not know exactly how many shots there are, so when I mix drinks it becomes more difficult to count — explains Thibes.
She also points out that if a person has more tolerance to the effects of alcohol, meaning they take longer to feel drunk and generally don’t have a hangover, that doesn’t mean drinking has fewer harmful effects on their body. She also recalls the short-term risks associated with episodic consumption:
— We have short-term problems, which mainly affect young people, such as road accidents, cases of violence, people becoming aggressive, people regretting something, a higher risk of having unprotected sex and contracting an STI (sexually transmitted infection). In the medium and long term, this episodic consumption also increases the risk of more than 200 types of diseases in the future, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, in addition to alcoholism.
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