Rehydrate

Alcohol is a diuretic – a chemical that kicks your urinary system into overdrive, and unless you managed to alternate your alcoholic beverages with water in between (which never works does it?), your post-drinking symptoms are most likely due to dehydration. Rehydrating is key when it comes to recovering from a hangover and cannot be stressed enough. But I’m not talking coffee, Red Bull or hair-of-the-dog here. Caffeine is an acknowledged stimulant, and while you might hope caffeine can perform its miracles of giving some much needed focus and alertness, it’s another diuretic. Red Bull isn’t much better (and requires another column), and choosing the hair-of-the-dog option would only be advisable if you want to pass out to forget what you’ve done the night before. Coffee will not help your stomach either, so the best option is water at room temperature. You may add some fresh lemon or fresh orange juice to give you additional Vitamin C for energy, and for soothing your upset tummy.

Top Up

When you drink excessively, you lose a lot of key minerals and vitamins including potassium, magnesium and B-Vitamins, all of which need to be topped up. Bananas are a great hangover food; they are like nature’s own little hangover cures. Not only are they full of fructose (natural fruit sugar) to help with energy, they contain a nice amount of potassium. Bananas are also natural antacids – which will help your nausea and stomach pain – and they also contain magnesium, which helps to relax pounding blood vessels in your head. Have a banana on toasted wholegrain bread (for the carbohydrates and B-Vitamins) with organic peanut or almond butter (great sources of magnesium and protein), and you get a good dose of all those key minerals and vitamins you lost the night before. Drinking vegetable bouillon soup or coconut water are two other good sources of vitamins and minerals, and easy for a fragile stomach to digest.

Eat

Do eat. Yes, it might be the last thing you want to do, but you will undoubtedly feel a lot better the minute you get your blood sugar levels up after having had some food. There is no one-and-only hangover food cure, but I’ve heard from many of my friends that you can’t beat a good fry-up. It gives you the greasy fat to coat your stomach, and the bread and eggs will give you the carbohydrates and protein for energy and blood sugar support. All I can say there is no perfect food cure for a hangover, so if you’ve found one that works for you, stick to it. My advise, though, would be to opt for a well-balanced meal, including all groups of macronutrients: complex carbohydrate, lean protein and healthy unsaturated fats. A toasted wholegrain bagel with cream cheese and salmon is another good option, and so is porridge with natural yoghurt and strawberries, giving you enough fibre for blood sugar balance, selenium to boost liver function, and Vitamin C for energy and soothing your tummy.

Sleep

But for the best cure of all (and if you have the luxury of not having to get up), go back to bed after your breakfast and sleep it off.

Wishing you a wonderful and nutritious Christmas!

Lisa

Any of the above could be a result of changes in your body caused by long-term stress. Many vital nutrients, such as magnesium, get reduced by stress hormones. As magnesium is a vital part of energy production in the body, restoring your nutrient balance can make a really big difference to how you feel.

Stress maybe a fact of life, but feeling drained and not having enough energy to spend quality time with your friends and family shouldn’t be. If you think you could benefit from a nutritional assessment to help your body better deal with the effects of stress, contact us for a free no obligation chat to find out how nutritional therapy can help manage the effects of stress.

Looking at how you eat can really help you get a better night’s sleep.

The first thing I would check is caffeine consumption.  It’s sometimes easy to forget that all those cups of tea and coffee and cans of Coke do add up.  Adding the teas, coffees and colas up can quickly amount to levels of caffeine that could definitely contribute to keeping you awake at night.

Start eliminating your caffeine drinks from later on in the day, and just leave your morning coffee or tea if you can.

There are also some natural sedatives that can be helpful.  Lettuce in particular contains a substance which encourages deeper sleep and some people find a banana an hour before bedtime helps them sleep better.

Calcium and magnesium are also natural tranquillisers.  These minerals can be easily depleted through stress, so it can be helpful to find a supplement to take in the evening to boost the levels. Nuts and seeds are also a good source of many minerals, and can be used as healthy snacks.

If you need some more personalised advice on better sleep, book in for a nutrition consultation!

We’ve all had the occasional headache, and often even know the cause of it.  The heavy night out, working late to reach a deadline or general lack of sleep can all be triggers.  Most can be treated with painkillers, but many don’t like taking them on a regular basis.

The problem with painkillers is also the fact that although they make the pain go away, the underlying reason why the headache started in the first place may still be there.  As soon as you stop taking the painkillers, the headaches often return.

So what are the alternatives?  As this is a nutrition column, I’ll talk about how your diet can help, but there are also other disciplines, such as acupuncture that can be extremely helpful and are also worth exploring.

One of the simplest ways to reduce your chances of getting headaches is to keep well hydrated.  Dehydration is almost certainly also contributing to those morning after headaches and most people know that drinking plenty of water before you go to bed after a boozy night out can make big difference to how you feel the next day.

But you can also get dehydrated during the day.  Drinking endless cups of tea or coffee, or cans of fizzy drinks all rob your body of its most important nutrient – water.  So cut back on your caffeine, and put a large bottle of water on your desk in the morning and sip from it throughout the day, aiming to finish by the time you leave work.

Other areas we nutritionists look at when rooting around for the underlying cause of the headaches are levels of certain nutrients and possible food intolerances.

I recently saw a client who had suffered from recurring headaches for as long as he could remember.  He had got to the stage when he almost didn’t notice the milder aches, and it was only when I asked that he realised that he had a headache even as we spoke.

His food intolerance test indicated a handful of problem foods, so I asked him to eliminate those from his diet for a trial two week period.  I also gave him some extra magnesium and vitamin B3, both of which can make a big difference to the severity and frequency of headaches.

After the two week period he reported a gradual decrease in the number of headaches he was getting.  We decided to continue with the same approach for another four weeks, and this time also eliminate caffeine and increase water intake.

After two months the headaches were no longer chronic, and only seemed to appear on a more occasional basis.  He also confessed to me that those occasional bouts were mostly caused by a night out, or stress at work.

The Nutrition Coach is featured in an article in Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine focusing on diet and quality of sleep.

The food you eat can have a profound effect on how you sleep. In this article, the Nutrition Coach offers a few tips on getting a good night’s rest.

“First things first, it’s no use carefully choosing foods to help you sleep if you overeat directly before retiring. This is because a full stomach makes your digestive system work overtime, and may prevent sleep. So, as a rule, try to eat dinner at least three hours before going to bed.”

Find out more about how The Nutrition Coach can help improve sleep quality.

Contact us to find out how we could help you with improving the quality of your sleep with nutrition..

View the article here.

Welcome to The Nutrition Coach Blog; your resource for news and opinion on matters related to health, nutrition and vitality.

Find out more about the team at The Nutrition Coach:

Kate Cook
Kim Porter
Sanna Anderson
Julia Alderman
Hilary Davies