Cheers to the drinks you can enjoy without a hangover!

NEW YEAR’S Eve is, for many, a time to let your hair down and party. But apart from sticking to a glass or two, is there any scientifically proven way to minimise the hangover that follows?

In a review published in 2008, Dr Joris Verster, a researcher in pharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, found that darker coloured drinks, which contain more congeners (chemicals that give drinks their colour and taste), result in worse hangovers. So stick to beer, vodka or white wine and steer clear of brandy or rum. His team also looked at whether drinking water after consuming alcohol made you less likely to experience a hangover, something I swear by. Yet when the students he was studying were asked to rate their hangovers, after having either drunk or not drunk water before bed, there was no difference when it came to the severity of the hangover.

When you wake up the next morning it is probably best not to reach for the paracetamol, because it is metabolised by your liver, which could still be struggling to cope with the alcohol.

Ibuprofen is a better bet because it does not affect the liver in the same way (although it can irritate the stomach).

As for other hangover cures, there is no evidence for the benefits of ‘hair of the dog’ (i.e. more alcohol the next day) or electrolyte drinks.

I have a very low tolerance to alcohol, largely because I have alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency, which means I tend to flush when I drink even modest amounts of booze. It also means I get terrible hangovers. So I will be sticking to my usual modest intake. Probably.