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i do two huge glasses of water before bed, and that usually kills it before it gets me, but if you happen to have a friend who is a paramedic the absolute best hangover cure is an IV drip of good ole’ saline after drinking. Never try to give yourself one unless you are trained though, you will most likely screw it up and when you have been drinking, the blood does not clot as easily and if you rupture a large vein or artery you could lose a dangerous quantity of blood, much more than if the same event happened while sober. I know people who have been turned away at piercing parlors while drunk because of the risk of bleeding.
A hangover is caused by dehydration as alcohol is a powerful diuretic. This results in the volume of cerebrospinal fluid dropping. This is the fluid your brain is floating in and if it is reduced your brain bangs about against your skull. This is what causes the pain. Patients who have had a lumber puncture and sit up to quickly afterwards will suffer a severe headache similar to a hangover due CSF leaking out of the hole at the bottom of their spine.
The best cure for a hangover is to avoid getting dehydrated in the first place. Drinking two pints of water before bed is a good start. I also take acetaminophen and ibuprofen and find it works quite well.
Emergency, that fizzy vitamin powder that you add to water. Two packets of that, no caffeine, and don’t eat anything, or only eat fresh fruit, or juice. Grapefruit juice is my fave. Greasy food just makes you tired so you can go back to sleep. Alcohol is metabolized into a very similar chemical to adrenaline, or so I understand, which is why you always wake up at the crack of dawn, or whenever you have metabolized enough to counteract the sedative effect it has on your brain. That is why people say drinking to sleep well is counter-effective. You need to get your electrolytes back up and get some natural energy from B vitamins and such, which emergency has. Leave your stomach alone, since its probably sour anyway, drink water, and like evander said, don’t take pain killers. They are also hard on your stomach, and terrible for your liver, which is already struggling to do away with all the crap you drank the night before and probably not getting to the other toxins it normally does away with in the night. Or just drink more. It depends on your goals.

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