Hangover and the morning after

OK Relax again …

However, of course as you grow up, your liver organ increases in size so can tolerate more alcohol than that of a child. But a child’s liver is comparatively innocent and fresh and reacts vigorously to the poison. That’s actually a healthy reaction!

Symptoms vary from person to person.  However, if the diagnosis of ‘heat’ causing Liver Qi stagnation, Liver Yang excess and rebellious Stomach Qi is appropriate, then Chinese medicine can help. That’s because these are all signs of what is called ‘excess’ in Chinese medicine, (ie a kind of ‘Yang Excess’), so anything which reduces Yang, or makes it move around and, to a lesser extent balances it with ‘Yin’ – will help.

(If all this Yin and Yang stuff is a bit perplexing, try reading the page on Yin and Yang.)

For rebellious Stomach Qi, anything swallowed (including food, painkillers and herbs) should normally not be taken with cold or iced water, but with warm water with a slice of ginger in it.

Hangover Prevention – What to do beforehand!

• Keep fit and take plenty of exercise, eat good food (including protein) with consideration for your Stomach and digestion. Read some of what Chinese medicine thinks of good nutrition here. 
• Cultivate good sleep. Insomnia? Click here.
• Avoid too much stress. Stress? Click here.
• Vigorous dancing is a good form of exercise between drinking.
• Don’t take alcohol if you are already tired: tiredness is a sign that your Stomach energy is deficient. Drowning it in alcohol when it, and you, are tired – as after a long day’s work – means it won’t digest so well, and you’ll be more prone to suffer. If you are tired, first rest, or sleep for 20 minutes: then eat a sensible meal. Only after your energy has recovered, set out to drink. (And then, ideally, drink in moderation – but you hardly need that advice if you’re determined to get drunk!)
• To avoid a hangover, take alcohol with food, and take it over a long period of time, interspersed with exercise. Don’t drink lots on its own in a short period of time.

• Before, during and after drinking alcohol, drink plenty of water. 
• Exercise after alcohol and before bed to help ward off Liver Qi stagnation and ‘burn off’ heat. However, exercise carefully – I don’t mean lifting weights! I mean take a fast walk, where you get a bit out of breath for 20 minutes. 

About that vigorous exercise …

• NB vigorous exercise immediately before going to sleep is not usually a good idea because it increases Yang energy too much, and to sleep you need less Yang and more Yin. Still, in this situation of over-drinking it may be a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, because the extra oxygen you take up when walking fast will help you metabolise the alcohol, and the exercise will help to burn off a few calories. So after taking the fast walk, walk sedately for a while, to allow yourself to cool and calm down. (Make sure you have enough clothes to prevent yourself from getting cold, however – alcohol upsets your bodily temperature controls and it’s easy to lose body-heat.)

Bowel movement

• Have a good bowel movement before going to bed. Why? Because what used to be called ‘purging’ helps clear heat, and the less heat-forming ‘stuff’ you have inside your bowels, the less heat you’ll develop in your sleep. I do not recommend laxatives, however, as these may not work immediately, and could force you from your bed just as you are getting to sleep. In bed, make sure that you can vary the number of bed-clothes easily. If you are too hot, reduce them, but not so much or for so long that you wake cold, or worse, cramped.
• Good treatment (eg with acupuncture) may be able gradually to improve your health so your hangover occurs less often or less badly. More likely it will just help you to recover faster. (What does acupuncture aim to do? Depending on the diagnosis, eg, Liver Qi stagnation, Damp-Heat, etc, it aims to move the Qi and clear the damp and heat: there are acupuncture treatments for these conditions. Acupuncture doesn’t claim to treat the hangover itself, just the syndromes recognised in Chinese Medicine which arise as a result of the hangover.

Dealing with a hangover

If you’ve followed this explanation of what happens in terms of Chinese medicine,when you get a hangover, the following will make more sense:

• Liver Qi Stagnation: take exercise. That’s the best and fastest way to clear it. You don’t have to exhaust yourself, just walk, though the more vigorous you are (… well, up to a point) the faster it will clear. Also drink lots of water. A banana may help. Ideally, walk fast enough to get out of breath, and for at least 20 minutes.
• Liver Yang rising: this usually occurs with some other syndromes too, particularly Liver Blood deficiency and sometimes another syndrome called Liver Yin deficiency. (Symptoms of which include, if you can’t be bothered to click on the links: mild anxiety, mild depression, lack of direction in life, insomnia, dream-disturbed sleep, floaters in eyes, blurred vision, pale complexion and dizziness.)
• Both of these often occur because you haven’t looked after yourself properly in the past, making yourself more susceptible to Liver Yang rising. In these cases, a large meal, full of protein and carbohydrate, and vitamin pills, mainly vitamin B complex (failing which B6 and B12), will really help. (That’s assuming you don’t have Stomach Rebelling, meaning nausea, of course .)
• For the Liver Yang type of headache just mentioned, exercise probably won’t help much. Instead, rest, indeed sleep if possible. Rest here means semi-reclining, head uppermost, with the body and hands and feet covered but head uncovered. If hands or feet are very cold, warm them with a hot water bottle as this encourages circulation downwards rather than upwards.