A Sobering Thought...

By Sara Templeton

It's party time. You've worked hard and now it's time to play hard. 

Whatever your motivation for wanting to go out and drink excessive amounts of grog, there is almost always one certainty: most of it will be forgotten the next day when you wake up with a head full of pain.

You see with the magical elixir or the amber ale comes the dreaded hangover and a loss of concentration and control.

On average it only takes five drinks for women and six for men to procure a hangover the next day. Not all of us are average, but them's the stats.

There's nothing quite like a big night on the town or one of those (sometimes embarrassing) office functions. 

Whether you're going to a club, café or hotel - perhaps even staying at home - getting tipsy, legless, rat-arsed, drunk, smashed, tanked or possibly even paralytic is one of western society's most popular past-times.

In the USA alone, hangovers are said to account for around $US148 billion a year. This is mainly due to absenteeism and poor job performance than government-funded stomach-pumping sessions.

Some studies suggest that the effects of hangovers have more dire consequences than simply tiredness and headache. 

These include cardiac, psychiatric and neurological problems. 

Your cognitive and technical skills are also reduced during a hangover and sometimes even for prolonged periods after this hazy ailment.

The morning after a long night drinking alcohol, most people will be dehydrated. This is usually the cause for most headaches together with congeners - the toxic chemicals created when alcohol ferments.

The dehydration is a direct result of your body trying to rid itself of the alcohol - a poison - and to do this it must mix (dilute) the toxins with water then expel them (sweat and urine). 

If the body can't find water sitting around in your stomach then it will take it from other places like lymph nodes and your brain which is 90% water - hence the headache.

The worst thing you can do after a big night is drink a cup of coffee in the morning. This is because, like alcohol, it is a diuretic and simply flushes fluids through your body very rapidly, instead of retaining them. 

Simply drink a couple glasses of water before you go to bed, and eat something salty to better retain fluids (though sometimes it is hard to remember to do this when alcohol has mottled the senses). 

A good idea is to leave a bottle of water out by the bed for when you return home.

Other causes of hangovers can include depleted mineral, sugar and vitamin levels in the body and also substances such as acetone and methanol found in drinks can cause the dead head sensation. 

To remedy this, your body will need plenty of salt and a good answer is any type of sports drink. This will replenish the lost minerals that actually retain and keep the fluids in your system.

Plenty of fruit will also be beneficial and some evidence suggests that fructose (the natural sugar in fruit) helps your body burn off excess alcohol at an accelerated rate.

Of course there are literally thousands of homespun hangover remedies, such as taking one raw egg and a cup of tomato juice, swimming in icy water, or drinking protein enhanced bodybuilding powder with milk and caviar. 

But the most important one is to keep hydrated.

There are many supposed hangover remedies and cures out there too - some herbal, some not - but most are believed to work like a placebo. But sometimes the mind over matter syndrome can be quite successful too!