Among all those advices, we are bombarded with lately: how to pick your bubbles for New Year’s party, how to throw the best New Year’s party ever, what to wear, or what delicious appetizers you should prepare – I didn’t find much about us, the drinkers.
How to combine alcohol with food so we don’t celebrate New Year with a gigantic hangover? I think these few rules sums it up pretty much for everybody. Surely, every single one of us made a painful mistake (or few) of letting ourselves go – and we paid for it. Well, we did handle it better, then. But as we age, I feel that our body tolerance to such a misstep is much lower.
So, how to take care of ourselves when we drink more than usual, not to wake up sick? Here are few simple tips that should prevent that:
For wine lovers
1. Stay with just wine all night. You can mix white or red, if you feel like it.
2. Light wines with light meals, heavy wines with heavier food.
3. Drink your wine with food, or take turns (wine/food/wine) so you don’t create too acidic environment in your stomach.
4. For every glass of wine – two glasses of water.
5. Enjoy your midnight champagne; it combines well with wine.
6. Resist the temptation to have few shoots in between, even if your friends insisted. You would be very sorry the next morning, when your friends are no longer around.
For beer drinkers
1. Thanks to the bitter beer taste, you can eat more fatty refreshments. Lucky you! With such a solid base of fatty foods in your stomach, you can also take the alcohol attack much better than others.
2. Toast with a midnight champagne just symbolically. These two bubbles don’t enjoy each others company very much.
3. Don’t get bored with just one kind of beer. Taste a scale of small brews, boutique or imported beers. Much more fun than just your favorite bud all night long.
For cocktail lovers
1. Stick with one kind of mixed drink the whole night, otherwise your morning will be also “very colorful”.
2. Just like wine drinkers, drink lots of water. Cocktails tend to dehydrate your system. They don’t really make good friends with food either – maybe just less sweet margaritas.
3. Forget about midnight champagne. Seriously! The meeting with the wave of cocktails in your stomach may create tsunami. Way too disturbing!
After all – get the party going and enjoy yourself!
One more trick that works for me: before I start drinking more than usual, I take an Airborne formula dissolved in a large glass of water. It gives a little kick of vitamin support to my system that’s about to be attacked by alcohol. Maybe it doesn’t have any significant effect from the medical point of view, but I believe it works for me.
Start your after-party morning with lots of water. For some, coffee works well. For some, hot bowl of great and rich chicken soup would do a miracle to their stomach. Whatever is soothing you!
I would never, ever start with a popular motto of some of my “hero” friends: “what ever broke you will fix you”! Oh no, no Bloody Mary with lots of hot sauce and vodka for me! I, instead, give my body an alcohol free day. For some reason, I believe that my liver and kidneys will thank me later.
Let me know what works the best for you. Don’t be a stranger, share your secrets with us!
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