With the festive season on the horizon, plenty of folks are gearing up for a month filled with yuletide merriment—and, quite often, the dreaded morning-after hangover. A staggering 68% of Brits confess to battling hangovers during the holiday stretch, with an average of four hangovers each in December alone.
London mobile bar entrepreneur Alex Harris, the brains behind 411bars, says there’s a simple answer to this headache: sugar.
According to Harris, sugar significantly exacerbates hangovers for several reasons, therefore cutting it out is crucial to avoiding them. Firstly, he notes, “Sugar is likely to worsen your hangover for a few key reasons, so reducing it is key to being hangover free. Firstly, a sugary mixer will undoubtedly mask the taste of alcohol in any drinks, likely resulting in your drinking more drinks, often spirits with a higher ABV,” reports Gloucestershire Live.
He continued: “Secondly, the excess sugar and processed ingredients usually found in mainstream brands (when combined with alcohol) do not make you feel good, which is linked to how the body processes both sugar and alcohol. One of the most common additions is glycerin, which is used by brands to give a smoother swallow. It is 26 times sweeter than sugar often resulting in headaches and that sore throat effect associated with hangovers.”
Harris even provides a protip for sidestepping these sugary side effects, adding, “For example, Polish vodka, by law, can’t contain artificial ingredients, and therefore is likely to be your best bet to avoid the hangover impacts of glycerin. Finally, sugar causes de-hydration, due to the sugar replacing water in the bloodstream, compounding your hangover.”