Food and drink cures for those inevitable Christmas hangovers

Valerie O’Connor has the ‘never agains’ sorted for those who’ve gone ho, ho, ho a little too gung-ho    

Let me present hat elusive elixir — the cure.

It’s for the morning after the night before — that time when everything was so much fun and the greater the number of cocktails you ordered, the more all your cares and worries just floated away — and on a big disco tune too.

As we hit peak silly season, the most likely greeting you may get from party animals and the thousands of Irish ‘home for the Christmas’ is “I’m in bits”.

We are consumed, not only with consuming booze like it’s the last day on earth, but also with wanting to know how to avoid a hangover at all costs.

Nothing as sensible as drinking less will be entertained, however, as we reach for the jumbo breakfast roll, it’s the cure we want, before we go out and do it all again the next day.

With rising alcohol prices it’s surprising that people can afford to pack out a pub anymore, but we will always find a way to enjoy a drink or three.

As life throws you Christmas, and Christmas throws you nights out, the best thing I can do is throw you a few easy lifelines to get you back out on the dance-floor pronto.

These food and drink cures will have you feeling full of energy and put a spring in your step, if not, you can always blame that one bad pint!

Tempting as it to make a huge pot of strong coffee, the black stuff will only make you feel worse the next day — due to it’s diuretic effects it will dehydrate you even more.

Ditto for cans of fizzy drinks.

The most effective cure — which I have done clinical trials on, (as in, invited friends home and tested it on them), is coconut water.

This murky stuff has been on supermarket shelves for a couple of years now and while it’s said to be good post-workout, nothing compares to the effectiveness of the fresh stuff.

I discovered the amazing anti-inflammatory effects of coconut when I was cracking open a coconut one day around halloween time.

I drank the water so that it wouldn’t splash everywhere when I smashed the nut open, ten minutes later I noticed that a blinding headache I’d had, was gone.

I immediately researched the effects online to find that yes, coconut water is full of electrolytes and will rehydrate you faster than any sugar-laden sports drink.

It’s a good idea to have a few coconuts in your fruit bowl as nobody wants to be trawling around Lidl in their pyjamas looking for them over Christmas.

Shake the nuts to ensure they are full of liquid, a dry coconut is no use to anyone.

To easily access the water, there are three little dimples on the top of the coconut.

Two are hard and one is fibrous.

The easiest way to get at the water is to poke at the holes to find the soft one and for this, I use a screwdriver. Poke at the soft hole until the utensil goes all the way through. You will hear a sucky noise as gas is released from inside. You can either shake the water from the nut into a glass, or do it the easy way and just stick a straw into it and suck away.

If you can stomach it, a small glass of sauerkraut juice or any juice from fermented vegetables will do wonders for your ailments — due to the sodium and electrolytes present in the fermenting liquids.

Anything made of beetroot like a kvass or a juice will do too, as beetroot is a great liver tonic.

If you can have something made of beetroot before you hit the tiles, all the better.

My go-to juice is the ABC: Apples, Beetroot and Carrot is delicious and a vibrant, wild pink colour.

Simply juice a beet with a couple of carrots and apples.

I always try to clean the juicer, which only takes a minute, before I drink the juice so that I get my reward and it isn’t followed by cleaning up.

If you didn’t manage to stock up on coconuts or beetroot then the next best thing is a banana milkshake, easy and quick to make too. The best kind of bananas are those that are really ripe and have some black spots on the skin.

As Homer Simpson wisely states “Bananas are an excellent source of potassium”, and this mineral is depleted through drinking too much and leaves you feeling groggy and cranky.

Eggs are next on the menu as these superfoods contain taurine which boosts liver function, not to mention they are easy to prepare and you can always add some veggies or smoked salmon to your scramble.

If you’ve really pickled yourself and are having ‘the fear’, it’s tempting to lie in bed all day feeling woeful.

Instead drag yourself into the shower, eat something and get out for a belter of a walk, preferably in nature, no matter the weather, you will always feel better.

Otherwise if you’re lucky enough to have company under the covers, take Shirley Valentine’s advice and have sex for breakfast, sex for dinner, sex for tea and sex for supper, it’s called the F plan.

Happy Christmas!