There’s actual scientific evidence behind these hangover helpers, so listen up.
Drink water before you go to bed.
The NHS advises: "Drink a pint or so of water before you go to sleep. Keep a glass of water by the bed to sip if you wake up during the night."
If you forget to do that, all hope is not lost. Just drink some in the morning, and plenty throughout the day.
"One of the underlying mechanisms that makes you feel hungover is dehydration," says Dr Richard Stephens, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University. Tackling that won't cure your hangover completely, but it will help.
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Take paracetamol when you wake up.
The second way a hangover makes you feel like you're dying is producing an immune-response mediated by something called cytokines. Cytokines are a broad category of molecules that are important in your immune system.
"When you have a hangover and you sort of feel all puffy, that's one of the mechanisms," says Stephens. "So if you take something that counteracts an inflammatory response, like paracetamol, that would relieve those symptoms."
Headaches can be partly caused by dehydration, but the immune response also contributes, so anti-inflammatory drugs will help with that.
Paracetamol or ibuprofen are good choices. But the NHS advises that you avoid asprin if you can as it "may further irritate the stomach and increase nausea and sickness".
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If sleeping is an option, and you want to, do that.
However much you may feel like doing it, there's no evidence that just sitting in a darkened room all day is going to help you hangover. (There is, however, one study of male Swiss mice in which scientists gave them alcohol and found "constant darkness resulted to be in a faster recovery of both motor and anxiety impairments" but it's a bit of a stretch to apply that to humans.)
But there's no harm in getting some rest if you're not feeling so great. "If you feel ill, you'd probably be more comfortable if you stayed in bed," says Stephens.
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Do something to distract yourself from the misery of your hangover.
Lots of people swear by going for a run, but there's no evidence that it'll help your hangover symptoms.
"Exercise might just distract you cognitively from thinking about your hangover and its symptoms," says Stephens. "It might provide relief through distraction, but then anything you could do to distract yourself helps."
So if you're not the running type, try watching a film or playing a video game – anything that will take your mind off your achy head.
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