Have you ever experience a severe hangover after partying and hard drinking last night? Well, it’s no doubt that the after-effects of drinking liquor are head ace, nausea, and the awful feeling ones we get up from the bed.
One of the common things we do to sober up is to drink coffee. But do you consider that drinking coffee can help your brain and body to have a normal function, and neutralize the high level of alcohol after sobering?
The sad truth is drinking coffee cannot help you sober up.
So how can I sober up my hangover?
Time is needed for your body to metabolize alcohol and coffee cannot help you to reduce your recovery time. However, coffee can help your body to become more awake, but it doesn’t mean your blood alcohol level diminished. Caffeine in coffee acts as a stimulant, and alcohol is the central nervous system depressant. While your body is on the process of intoxication drinking coffee can help to wake you up.
Myth Busters says, “coffee can affect your drunken state by tricking your mind into thinking you’re close to sobriety. It turns out the caffeine in coffee is a stimulant, which can make you feel like you’re ready to handle certain potentially dangerous activities — like driving.”
Thus this means that even coffee can keep us alert during the process of alcohol intoxication we should restrain to do dangerous activities such us driving because our mind and body are still intoxicated with alcohol, and time is the answer to completely sober up from your hangover.
“More recently, a study published in 2009 was designed to tease out in more detail the effects of combining alcohol and caffeine. Mice were given alcohol followed by the human equivalent of eight cups of coffee. After the caffeine, they seemed more alert, but they were still much worse than sober mice at getting round a maze.” — BBC
- So why people drink coffee for the hangover?
Well, coffee is a common beverage to drink after a hangover. People have already in their mind that coffee can help them get on their feet and sober up. The caffeine in coffee can help to counteract the soberness induced by alcohol, and this is the reason why coffee is a known drink for a hangover. However, even we feel alert after drinking coffee this doesn’t change the fact that it can’t remove feelings of drunkenness or some of the cognitive deficits alcohol causes.
Time is what we needed for our body to completely detoxify the alcohol levels in our body. It takes approximately an hour for the body to metabolize one unit of alcohol. After drinking alcohol the body process it in several ways.“Mostly it’s broken down in the liver by two enzymes, alcohol dehydrogenase, and aldehyde dehydrogenase. After several steps, the alcohol is eventually excreted as water and carbon dioxide.” Drinking coffee doesn’t speed up the process, but it will help you to stay awake.
So if you need to sober up in the morning, you can drink coffee to help you stay alert, but the best practice to help your body while on the process of sobriety is to drink more water to stay hydrated, drink pain reliever if necessary for a headache, drink a sports drink fortified with vitamins and minerals like Gatorade, and have plenty of sleep to regain your strength.
