How To Avoid A Wine Hangover
If you could cure a red wine hangover or, better yet, avoid a hangover, wouldn't you do it? I'm guessing your answer is an emphatic yes.
So how did we end up here? Maybe you decided to visit that wine tasting you’ve heard so much about. Or, maybe a friend invited you over so they could show off their wine collection. Whatever the case, you get there and start the evening off with a glass of your favorite wine. Then you try a different vintage that comes highly recommended. A sip here, a glug there, and before you know it – you’ve had too much. You may not feel it now, but you sure will tomorrow. That's when the wine hangover kicks in.
Here are some quick tips to help you avoid a painful morning:
Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate: Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it encourages your body to lose fluid. Replenishing lost fluids by drinking water in between alcoholic beverages and before bed can alleviate dehydration symptoms commonly associated with hangovers. A good rule of thumb is to drink one glass of water for every alcoholic drink.
Choose Alcoholic Beverages Wisely: Darker liquors contain more congeners (substances produced during fermentation), which can exacerbate hangover symptoms. Opt for lighter-colored drinks such as vodka or gin instead.
Eat Before You Drink: Having food in your stomach can slow the absorption of alcohol, helping to prevent a hangover. Opt for a balanced meal with protein, fats, and carbohydrates.
Moderation is Key: The most surefire way to avoid a hangover is to drink in moderation. That's a revolutionary idea, isn't it? Who would have thought?
In all fairness, everyone (we hope) knows you should drink in moderation. But everyone also knows this is often easier said than done. And there is no reason to be sanctimonious here – as long as you’re responsible about it and don’t attempt something foolish like getting behind the wheel of a car, overindulging in wine occasionally is hardly the end of the world.
What can feel like the end of the world is the following morning. You’ll be desperate for a wine headache cure, but this situation is complex, and there isn’t a magic remedy. Still, there are measures you can take to help you get rid of a wine hangover. Or at least alleviate the symptoms.
Get Plenty of Sleep: Alcohol can interfere with your sleep cycle, leaving you fatigued the next day. Getting plenty of rest can help your body recover.
Avoid 'Hair of the Dog': While a Bloody Mary might be tempting, drinking more alcohol will only delay hangover symptoms, not cure them.
Replenish Electrolytes: Sports drinks, coconut water, or bouillon soup are excellent sources of sodium and potassium, which you lose while drinking.
Exercise: A gentle workout can boost your mood and stimulate endorphin production. However, be sure to hydrate properly before breaking a sweat.
This article will help with that. But to explain the treatment, we need to quickly go over what causes a hangover in the first place.
The Causes and Symptoms of a Wine Hangover
A wine hangover isn’t a disease to be cured. It’s just a group of symptoms that can appear as a consequence of drinking too much alcohol. And there is no formula to determine what “too much” is precisely. A single glass is enough to trigger the negative effects for some people, while others can get away with drinking significantly more. A basic understanding of what ABV means is a good starting point.
But, once you go over your limit, it will affect your body. Alcohol leads to dehydration. It can also cause your immune system to act up and trigger an inflammatory reaction. Additionally, it can irritate your stomach, lower your blood sugar, and negatively affect sleep quality.
Put this together, and you get the well-known symptoms of a hangover. These include headaches, fatigue, nausea and bellyaches, hypersensitivity to sound and light, thirst, etc.
Congeners
There are no fundamental differences between hangovers caused by wine and those caused by other alcoholic drinks. The same goes for red wine and white wine hangovers. Alcohol is the main culprit in all cases.
Still, people claim that certain drinks give them stronger hangovers. A notable example of this is the dreaded red wine headache. And as it turns out, this is true.
Substances called congeners are the reason for this. They can appear as a byproduct of fermentation and can increase the likelihood or severity of a hangover. And there are more congeners in dark liquors than in light ones.
That is why red wines tend to cause more problems. But any wine can cause a hangover if you drink too much, and the following treatments will work equally well if you’ve overindulged in white, sparkling, orange, or pink. Or any other type of wine.
Here are more details on what causes hangovers.
How to Cure a Red Wine Hangover: Specialized Products
You may wake up and feel like you have the worst hangover in history. But rest assured, millions share that sentiment. Because it’s a common problem, it naturally spawned somewhat of an industry around it. As a result, you can find quite a few products on the market specifically designed to help in this situation.
The fact is, the only surefire cure for a hangover is time. Your body needs a while to recover. However, certain products can help with the symptoms and make recovery much more bearable. Here are our four recommendations.
Toniiq - Ease Ultra-High Strength
Toniiq banks on a blend of high-quality antioxidants. They claim these chemicals will support your over-worked liver in its attempt to clear alcohol from your system. The liver needs to break down the alcohol (ethanol) into acetate to get it into a form that will leave your body.
Most of the top reviews of Toniiq Ease mention taking the pills before and after drinking. That seems to be the formula that cures wine hangovers. Some reviewers have also mentioned getting bad red wine headaches before finding this product. They claim to no longer get a wine headache when they take Toniiq pills before and after drinking.
If you want to determine if this product works, you can order it here.
Liquid I.V. Hydration Multiplier
In the “self-help” section, we already mentioned dehydration was one of the biggest problems with a hangover. And as you can guess by the name, this product is all about hydration.
It contains a lot of electrolytes and five essential vitamins and uses “cellular transport technology” to provide extensive and rapid hydration. It isn’t marketed specifically as a hangover cure – the manufacturer recommends it for exercise, overall wellness, traveling, etc. But it can also work well if you’ve had too much wine the previous night and are trying to cure a red wine hangover.
Follow this link for details.
Morning Recovery Drink
This product has seen some press exposure so you may have already heard of it. Its goal is to help your body rehydrate, detoxify, and recover after a wild night out. To this end, it packs a bevy of natural ingredients.
One of them is dihydromyricetin (DHM). This plant-based substance has a long history of use as a traditional medicine, and there are also scientific efforts that confirm its value in battling alcohol intoxication. Morning Recovery Drink also contains electrolytes, vitamins, prickly pear, and other plant extracts, and so on.
You can find out more here.
Cheers Hangover Cure
After the first two products on this list, you probably have a pretty good idea of what ingredients to expect. "Cheers" contains DHM, prickly pear extract, milk thistle, electrolytes, vitamins, etc. It simply ticks all the right boxes to cure a red wine hangover.
When you get a hangover, you’re experiencing the effects of short-term alcohol withdrawal. These capsules were made specifically to reduce those effects. They also replenish lost vitamins and help your liver do its work.
Click here for more info.
Conclusion
Following a night of drinking, countless people have sought a red wine hangover cure. Or the cure for drinking too much white wine, whichever you prefer. We’ve explained why you can’t fix this problem instantly, but we’ve also discussed how to address its symptoms.
So, the next time you overindulge, you can follow these tips and use some of the recommended products to make the morning after better.
