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Your best night out: hangover-free!

It’s the weekend, and you want to go out with your friends. You don’t want a hangover, but you also don’t want to be the one who orders soft drinks all night. You want a good time, without the down-time tomorrow.

Well, if you want to drink alcohol responsibly, here’s the scientific way for you to drink ‘just enough’, and really have the best night out!

The average night out

Most of us have had one of these: you’re like a puppy let out of its cage. In your enthusiasm, you order your first, second and third rounds, all together. You celebrate victories, drown out your sorrows, and basically find excuses to get drunk. The rest of the night is a write-off, and no one can tell you exactly where you left your new jacket, who dropped you off or if you finally got that cute girl’s number. ‘Did I take an Uber?’; ‘Did Jon drop me off?’ ‘My HEAD!’

The best night out

You get to the bar, and order the exact amount of drinks to hit “that sweet spot”. Suddenly, you feel your body relax – your muscles melt away like jello, as music pulsates through your veins. You’re grooving. Your jokes are hilarious (objectively); and your new-found charisma even gets the waitress to flirt with you. Your inhibitions drop just enough for you to let your freak flag fly, but not so much to make you obnoxious. You have become the most suave, enjoyable version of yourself, and the people around you can testify to that. In fact, you can testify to that, because you will remember every glorious moment tomorrow, when you wake up: hangover-free.

What’s happening here? This is known as the Optimal Buzz.

What is the Optimal Buzz?

The Optimal Buzz is the ideal blood alcohol level (BAC), and it’s in the range of 0,4 to 0,6. It’s just the right amount of inebriation to adjust your body chemistry into the social zone, before you stumble over into the ‘get out of my face, creep!’ zone. It gives you those feelings of sheer bliss, releases your inner social butterfly and reveals that fun child your friends have come to love. If you can keep your blood-alcohol level at this level, you can enjoy the buzz all night long!

How to not overdo it

However, once your BAC goes over 0,6, you lose the Buzz, and there is no coming back. It’s that moment in the night, when you suddenly start feeling a little sad, down, slow. Things get a bit fuzzy and dull. You notice a drop in your energy. This is also when most people think they just need another round. Sorry, friend – you’ve overshot the buzz, and there’s only one way now: DOWNHILL, and that can be dangerous.

Why can’t I get the buzz back?

There is a myth that ‘the more you drink, the better you feel’. The truth, though, is that your body processes alcohol in a biphasic way. This means that when you start drinking, the feeling of euphoria increases, but only up to a point (about 0,6 BAC). After this, the more you drink, the worse you feel.

How can I keep riding the wave?

The strategy to the Optimal Buzz is to “count drinks” – and know what counts as a drink. By using this online BAC calculator, you can figure out exactly how many drinks you can have during the time you are drinking according to your gender and weight. Adjust the types of drinks and quantities until you have the ideal strategy to ride the Optimal Buzz like a pro, and make sure you don’t go over your limits.

A note to regular drinkers

If you’re used to write-off weekends, you’ve probably developed a tolerance to alcohol. This means you won’t have as much of a buzz as your Sober Sally friend. Also, if you overshoot 0,6 you will feel much worse than someone who doesn’t normally drink. To get your tolerance down, make sure to keep your BAC below 0,6 for 2 months. If your tolerance is high because of genetic predisposition, there’s unfortunately no way around it. We’d advise against you drinking at all, since a naturally high tolerance puts you at risk of developing alcoholism.

Last word of caution: The Optimal Buzz does not make it safe to drive, so catch a lift or a taxi, have fun, get your friends to join you and make tonight the optimal night out!

Get the hangover, over with!

Good morning (or…afternoon!) How are you feeling…is your head pounding? Get up, get up – it’s 2016! A brand new year full of goals to achieve – okay you’re probably not listening to us because the room is spinning…yup, it’s a nasty hangover. Don’t worry. We have your cure!

Continue reading “Get the hangover, over with!”

5 Facts you don’t know about hangovers

The majority of us have experienced it at least once in our lives (if not more regularly!) You partied hard last night and you’ve woken up with the worst hangover. Ever. Hair of the dog? Bloody Mary? Greasy breakfast? Whatever helps “cure” your hangover is up to you, but here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in your body when you wake up feeling like a dog’s breakfast.

1. It’s caused by inflammation

Forget what everyone else has told you about hangovers, because it might not be true. The real reason you have such a bad headache and feel nauseous is because of inflammation. It’s caused when your liver starts producing cytokines molecules, which are responsible for all sorts of aches and pains.

2. Classic hangover symptoms include:

  • Tiredness
  • Headache
  • Muscle aches and pains
  • Nausea (possibly vomiting)
  • Shaking
  • Thirsty/Dehydrated
  • Bloodshot eyes
  • Sensitivity to light and sound

3. Dark liquors, worse hangover

You’ve probably heard that vodka is a “better” drink because it doesn’t give you such a bad hangover. And it’s actually true. Scientists have found that people who drink bourbon have a much harder time dealing with their hangovers compared to people who stick to vodka.

4. Hair of the dog?

It’s a popular hangover “cure” that encourages people to drink more alcohol to fix their current hangover. In truth it only gets you drunk again, and postpones the inevitable hangover you’ll get later on, once you’ve stopped drinking.

5. There’s no such thing as a hangover cure

And if there was, someone would be making a lot of money from it! Alas, there’s no silver bullet when it comes to curing a hangover. Having said that, there’s a lot you can do to reduce nasty symptoms, and it starts by not drinking so much the night before! That aside, you can lessen the effects by drinking 2 big glasses of water before you go to sleep, and taking a headache tablet. And if you still feel bad when you wake up, take ibuprofen and paracetamol, drink plenty of water, and get as much rest as possible. You should feel like your old self again by the end of the day.

Sources:

Live Science, Askmen.com, Women’s Health Mag

Hangover “cures”

Everyone from your grandmother to the person you sit next to on the bus claims to have a successful hangover cure. Many websites also offer hangover cures that sound very convincing and come with “scientific evidence” to back it up. Is there any truth to them though, or are we doomed to suffer through our hangovers for ever?

Here we take a look at the most popular hangover cures, some of which you might have tested out yourself!
Continue reading “Hangover “cures””