There are certain times in life when you feel the need for alcohol regardless of when you’re sad from getting heartbroken or when you’re happy and want to party all night. When you’re in the moment, everything is perfectly fine, one sip after one sip, one bottle turns into five, saying that you are not drunk when you don’t even know what you’re saying. Then, reality check, you wake up the next morning feeling terrible, wanting to throw up all the time, and that’s what we often call a hangover. You will now try to find any remedies to reduce your hangover starting from taking medicines to having a warm soup. Or might even drinking coffee to reduces your hangover.
Some people claim that it is true that coffee reduces hangovers while some mention that it could make hangovers worse. With the back-to-back claims, this article will serve to answer whether drinking coffee reduces hangovers or not.
Contents
Hangover And Its Symptoms
A hangover is a collection of displeasing symptoms after excessive alcohol consumption, mostly occurring in the morning after heavy drinking the night before. There are still no exact causes of hangovers other than extreme alcohol drinking, but researchers point out dehydration, gastrointestinal irritation, lack of sleep, and so on.
Frequent hangover symptoms consist of constant fatigue, weakness, tiredness, headache, dizziness. Also, feeling dehydrated, sweating, sensitivity to light and sound, with anxiety and uneasiness. Moreover, it may make you feel muscle aches, stomach aches, and the urge of vomiting as well.
The hangover symptoms may vary according to each person’s reliance on alcohol as the same amount of alcohol can affect people differently. It may take a few hours to get rid of a hangover, at most a day. Now that we know about the symptoms, we shall understand the effects of coffee on these symptoms.
Coffee Creates Alertness
Another positive side of caffeine to our body that helps during hangovers is that it helps to be more alert and more awake. A cup of coffee contains different substances like caffeine, adenosine, and adrenaline, which assist to boost alertness and focus.
In this situation, when you’re lacking energy, wanting to get out of sleep, coffee may help wake you up and keep you alive, focusing on your work throughout the day.
Coffee Increases Metabolism
The caffeine content in coffee can increase your metabolism to make you feel hungry. When you experience a hangover, you feel tired and have no energy. Hence, a joe of coffee would make your stomach growl and feel the need for some warm, healthy food. The increase in metabolism from eating would fill your body with fuel, strength, and energy in recovery and relief from the hangover.
Coffee May Avoid A Withdrawal Headache
If you consume coffee regularly on a daily basis, or have a mild addiction to caffeine and never skip a day without coffee, then drinking coffee may help to avoid a symptom that is a risk of headache.
One of the effects of a hangover is causing a severe headache. However, if you skip having your cup of coffee, the caffeine withdrawal would make your already existing headache much worse. Though avoiding caffeine withdrawal does not alleviate the headache from alcohol, it helps to not worsen the headache from not drinking coffee combined with alcohol.
Coffee And Headache Claims
There are a variety of studies and researches on the effects of coffee on hangover symptoms, one of which is a headache. Throughout the studies, there are also divisions of claims and evidence.
On one hand, research suggests that headaches, which are one of the key symptoms of hangovers, are caused by dehydration or loss of fluid. Therefore, consuming more fluids would make the hangover go away quicker. Research notes that if you drink coffee in moderation, for instance, black coffee, espresso, which is approximately 95% water, seems to be a great choice to maintain the fluid balance and thus lead to reducing hangover.
On the other hand, evidence shows that coffee can make your hangover worse by causing headaches. Caffeine narrows your blood vessels and thus increases blood pressure. If you’re already feeling like your head is pounding, this would make the pounding harder. Moreover, likewise to alcohol, coffee is a diuretic that can make you feel dehydrated if consumed in an excessive amount. This dehydration will further narrow the blood vessels and increase the blood pressure and cause a more severe headache.
Alternative For Coffee Drinkers
If you are a coffee drinker and do not want any sort of headaches from the withdrawal of caffeine and also from the rising blood pressure, we have other alternatives for you to follow.
First of all, when you first wake up in the morning, you should drink a full glass of water. Then, you can proceed to drink a little bit of coffee, precisely half of a cup. After that, you may have another glass of water and wait for about 30 minutes to an hour until drinking a little bit more coffee. If you don’t have any headache or any irregular symptoms, then you shall proceed to drink a little bit of coffee and plenty of water for the day.
Misconception: Coffee Won’t Sober You Up
There are ongoing misleading concepts about how coffee can sober you up getting rid of the major effects of alcohol. Although caffeine may cause you to be more alert and focus, it does not mean that you are sober from your hangover.
Even if you drink the types of coffee with high caffeine content, for instance taking shots of espresso after bottles of beer, coffee along with beer, or fresh cold brew the next day, the caffeine won’t prevent or decelerate the effects of alcohol on your body. To put it simply, coffee can help you stay awake but you still aren’t able to drive a car.
Coffee And Alcohol Is A Big NO
Some people still have a conception of combining caffeinated drinks with alcohol when drinking so that it could prevent the time of getting drunk or relieve the effects of hungover to a lesser extent. However, it is not the case according to precise studies and research as it could make your body and hangover worse.
Evidence from the centers for disease control and prevention suggests a warning of mixing alcohol with coffee causing severe dangers. Also, another review states that people who drink the mixture of coffee and alcohol are likely to behave in riskier behavior, indicating that this mixture is not a cure for a hangover nor causes any hangover relief.
Other methods
Hangovers like other minor illnesses need to be processed by time, in short hangover is time. A good hangover cure maybe a night of very good sleep, good rest for plenty of hours to relieve all the headache and pain. Food is also crucial in this process, as it is related to our health. You need to eat a good and warm meal in the morning with plenty of water or caffeinated drinks along the way.
Exercising is another go-to alternative as it is also related to good health as well. After absorbing the nutrition from the meal and drinks, you may be able to work out a little to burn all the toxins, to sweat out which makes you feel better.
If the above methods are time-consuming, you may try hangovers or painkillers such as aspirin, ibuprofen, vitamin, or other pills recommended by authorized pharmacists.
Final Thoughts
To answer the question of whether coffee is a cure for a hangover, the answer would be no. However, if it was asked if coffee could reduce hangovers to some extent, the answer is yes. Coffee can act to reduce symptoms of a hangover such as being more alert and focused, increase metabolism to start a great morning, and also reduce the risk of severe headache. However, coffee is not the only alternative as it also comes with drawbacks and misconceptions, if your symptoms begin to be worse methods like medicine, food may help to cure your hangover.
References
- Should you drink coffee on a hangover? | Medical News Today | Steph Coelho
- Should You Drink Coffee To Cure A Hangover? | Drift Away | Scott
- 10 hangover remedies: What works? | CNN | Anne Harding
- Is Drinking Coffee Good For Curing Hangovers? | Coffee Affection | Kate MacDonnel
Check out: Is Coffee Good for a Hangover? By Turn Healthy
