An alcohol detox should ideally start several days before you start drinking. There’s plenty you can to help prepare your body for the onslaught to come, that will ultimately make you feel better faster after the event and clear away any hangover. This is one of the healthy hangover cures.
If you know there is a possibility that you will over-indulge on alcohol one day or evening then you should at least prepare your body before hand and have a hangover cure ready for the day after.
Protecting Against Dehydration
The main side-effect of drinking too much alcohol is dehydration. Drinking at least 1.5 liters (3 pints) of water in the several days leading up to the big night out (you should be drinking this amount every day as a matter of course) will help your body with the alcohol detox in two main ways.
Firstly, it will completely hydrate your body in preparation for the alcohol detox – as all that alcohol will increase the rate of fluid loss. Secondly, it will help your body go through detox cleansing by leaving it fully purged and ready to deal with flushing through the alcohol to come. All the effective hangover remedies include drinking lots of water.
Protecting Your Liver
The liver is the organ for alcohol detox cleansing and purification so, over the next days, you need to keep it fully cleansed and ready for the overtime to come. There are many hangover cures and liver detox tonics that you can make to help prepare your liver. Include plenty of beetroot, black grapes, fresh garlic and garlic pills (odorless are best). Eat carrots or drink carrot juice – you can combine this with some lemon detox diet juices but make sure you include plenty of carrot and/or beetroot. Fennel and dandelion tea should also form part of your alcohol detox diet for the days preceding a big night out.
Protecting Your Stomach
There are also things you can do to prepare and even ‘line’ your stomach to help the alcohol pass through without too many problems. All good hangover cures start with this type of preparation. Blood sugar levels should be maintained and extremes should be avoided. Eat full meals during the day and don’t have your first drink on an empty stomach. Make sure your meals consist of plenty of vegetables, brown rice, salads, fruit, etc. If there is no healthy food available – often the nibbles are dips or fried food or are high in salt to make you drink more – just make sure you eat something, as drinking on a full stomach is much healthier for your stomach and will probably mean you drink less.
During The Evening
You can also take steps throughout the festivities that will help to affect a quick alcohol detox and ensure minimum damage the following day:
When choosing your drink remember that mixing sugar with alcohol – sweet spirits – will speed up the absorption of the alcohol, making you get drunk quicker. For this reason you should avoid spirits and sweet sugary drinks like alcopops or pre-mixed bottled drinks. Sugary drinks will also make you drink more as the sugar high you get will soon fall and you will reach for another drink just to keep your energy up.
Keep your hydration levels up by matching every alcoholic drink with the same amount of water. Water is still one of the best hangover cures. This doesn’t mean you have to dilute your drinks but it does mean that every other drink could be water. If you think that drinking water is not possible because the host will pressurize you to have a good time then fake it. A sparkling water with ice and lemon in a spirit glass can look like a gin or vodka and tonic and no one need ever know the difference. Barmen are very good at not giving the game away.
You can make a long drink out of white wine by creating a spritzer – more fluid, less alcohol.
Remember how you will feel the next day. Cutting back or stopping when you feel you’ve had enough is the best answer. Even then there is probably still enough alcohol in your system to have done quite enough damage and some that hasn’t even had time to take effect. Stopping when you feel jolly is probably already too late but will at least guarantee a fun evening and a clearer head the next day.
Drink plenty of fluids before you go to bed. If you’ve ever done a lemon detox diet you know that putting some fresh lemon juice in your water works wonders to detox your body from alcohol – lemon juice is alkaline-forming and will decrease the acidity of your stomach.
Each time you wake in the night to go to the toilet, make sure you replace what you have lost. The last part of the alcohol detox cleansing process means having a glass of water beside the bed and take six mouthfuls before you drift back off to fitful sleep.
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