There’s no instant cure for a hangover, but several strategies can meaningfully reduce how long and how badly you feel the effects. Hangover symptoms peak once your blood alcohol level drops back to zero, typically the morning after drinking, and can last 24 hours or longer. The goal is to support your body’s recovery process by addressing dehydration, low blood sugar, poor sleep, and inflammation.
Why You Feel So Bad
A hangover isn’t one problem. It’s several overlapping ones. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you urinate more than the volume of liquid you’re drinking. That leaves you dehydrated, which drives headache, dizziness, and fatigue. At the same time, your liver prioritizes breaking down alcohol over its other jobs, including keeping your blood sugar stable. It normally releases stored glucose between meals and overnight, but while it’s busy processing alcohol, blood sugar can drop. That drop contributes to shakiness, brain fog, and weakness.
Alcohol also triggers inflammation throughout the body and irritates the stomach lining, which explains the nausea. And while a drink might make you fall asleep faster, it suppresses the deep, restorative phase of sleep during the first half of the night. Once your blood alcohol starts falling, your sleep becomes fragmented and restless. Your brain essentially rebounds into a state of hyperarousal, disrupting the protective sleep patterns that help you feel rested. That’s why you can sleep for eight hours after drinking and still wake up exhausted.
Rehydrate Before Anything Else
Water is the single most helpful thing you can reach for. Drink a full glass before bed if you can remember, and keep drinking when you wake up. Plain water works, but adding electrolytes (through a sports drink, coconut water, or even a pinch of salt in water) helps your body absorb and retain fluid more effectively. Broth is another solid option because it replaces both sodium and fluid while being easy on an upset stomach.
Don’t chug a huge volume all at once if you’re nauseous. Steady sips over the first hour or two will stay down more reliably and still get you rehydrated.
Eat Something, Even If You Don’t Want To
Because your liver deprioritized blood sugar regulation while it processed alcohol, your glucose levels may be lower than normal the next morning. Eating brings them back up and can noticeably improve fatigue, irritability, and that shaky, hollow feeling. Bland, carbohydrate-rich foods like toast, crackers, bananas, or oatmeal are the easiest to tolerate. If your stomach can handle it, adding some protein (eggs, for example) provides longer-lasting energy.
There’s no special “hangover food” that works magic. The benefit comes from restoring calories and blood sugar, not from any particular ingredient.
Choose Your Pain Reliever Carefully
If you reach for a painkiller for the headache, pick the right one. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is processed by the same liver that’s already working overtime to clear alcohol from your system. Combining the two, especially repeatedly, can make your liver more susceptible to toxicity. The most serious risk is liver failure.
Anti-inflammatory painkillers like ibuprofen (Advil) or aspirin are generally a safer choice for a hangover headache, but they come with their own trade-off: they’re harder on your stomach lining, which alcohol has already irritated. If you have a sensitive stomach or any gastrointestinal issues, take them with food and keep the dose moderate.
The L-Cysteine Finding
One nutrient with actual clinical evidence behind it is L-cysteine, an amino acid. In a double-blind study at the University of Helsinki, subjects who took 1,200 mg of L-cysteine (with vitamins) after drinking experienced statistically significant relief from headache, nausea, stress, and anxiety compared to a placebo group. L-cysteine helps the body produce glutathione, which is the same compound your liver uses to neutralize the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism. You can find L-cysteine (sometimes labeled NAC, its supplement form) at most pharmacies and health food stores.
Why “Hair of the Dog” Doesn’t Work
Drinking more alcohol the next morning delays your hangover rather than curing it. Your symptoms peak as blood alcohol returns to zero, so adding more alcohol simply pushes that moment further into the future. You’ll still have to go through the same recovery process eventually, and you’ll have given your liver even more to deal with.
What Helps You Sleep It Off
Rest is genuinely restorative during a hangover, even though alcohol already disrupted your sleep quality the night before. The fragmented, shallow sleep you got while your body processed alcohol left you with a deficit. If you can, napping for even 20 to 30 minutes during the day gives your brain a chance to catch up. Keep the room dark and cool, and avoid screens for a few minutes before you lie down.
Caffeine can help with the headache and grogginess, but it’s also a mild diuretic. If you drink coffee, match it with extra water so you’re not worsening dehydration.
How to Reduce Your Next Hangover
What you drink matters. Dark-colored spirits like bourbon and whiskey contain higher levels of congeners, chemical byproducts of fermentation that intensify hangover symptoms. In a controlled study, bourbon produced significantly worse hangovers than vodka at the same alcohol dose, specifically because of its higher congener content. Clear spirits like vodka and gin have far fewer congeners. Beer falls somewhere in the middle, close enough to vodka in congener content that the difference alone doesn’t dramatically change hangover severity.
Pacing matters even more than drink choice. Eating a substantial meal before or while drinking slows alcohol absorption. Alternating alcoholic drinks with water reduces both total alcohol intake and dehydration. And giving your body more time between drinks lets your liver keep up, rather than falling behind and leaving you with a larger backlog to process overnight.
The only guaranteed way to avoid a hangover is to drink less, or not at all. But when that ship has sailed, hydration, food, rest, and time are the most reliable tools you have. Most hangovers resolve within 24 hours as your body finishes clearing the alcohol and its byproducts.