You can drink real fruit juice or water in between drinks. Doing this prevention tip, will help to keep you hydrated and perhaps fill you up a bit, so you drink less alcohol. The general chain of thought is that it takes approximately 200 ml of water to counteract 30 ml of alcoholic drink.
 
You know you are going out to celebrate. There will definitely be drinking. You do NOT want to be seriously messed up in the morning because you have that big meeting, exam, or golf outing, so the best thing for you to do is to be smart and use that old saying, “a ounce of prevention is worth a pound cure”. To help you out, here are some very good prevention tips that may ease your hangover symptoms.

The obvious prevention and the one you probably won’t want to follow is of course to not drink. OK, so maybe you can drink less, than you are otherwise inclined to do. You can drink real fruit juice or water in between drinks. Doing this prevention tip, will help to keep you hydrated and perhaps fill you up a bit, so you drink less alcohol. The general chain of thought is that it takes approximately 200 ml of water to counteract 30 ml of alcoholic drink.

Drinking alcoholic beverages mixed with carbonated soda absorbs the alcohol more quickly than when you drink non-carbonated alcoholic drinks.

Consuming sugar along with alcohol is just asking for a really bad hangover. Sugar combined with alcohol will accelerate the depletion of vitamin B in your system and your hangover will feel much worse.

Food and plenty of it, before, during and after the drinking event is a very good thing. Especially good is food with cheese and carbohydrates because they are good sources of amino acids. Food doesn’t absorb alcohol, but it does increase your metabolism, which does activate alcohol absorption and that increases the speed at which the body processes the alcohol.

Have fun with the gang, but don’t feel that you need to keep up with them. Sipping is good, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with “nursing a drink”. Drinking should not be a competition to see who can get drunk faster. Being drunk is not really cracked up to be, well, anything but drunk. Know your limit. Males can usually handle more alcohol before being over the limit than females. The average male can usually handle two drinks, especially if they are eating and drinking.
 
Women on the other hand can usually handle one drink and if the woman is small (120 lbs or less) than a 4 oz mixed drink or 12 oz beer is probably a good limit. Women who weigh more than 120 lbs can probably handle 1 1/2 drinks. A “half drink” is considered to be a wine cooler or a light beer.

Clear alcohol is best as dark alcohol tends to contain substance called cogeners. These darker drinks will cause more hangover symptoms. Clear alcohols are: white wine, light rum and vodka. Dark alcoholic drinks are: red wine, dark rum, sherry, and brandy. Beer is somewhere in-between a clear alcoholic drink and a dark one on a hangover misery scale. Judge beer by how dark it is, the lighter in color the better. The clear and dark comparison does not work regarding how drunk or how quickly you can become drunk, it only determines the likelihood and the severity of your hangover.

Dehydration is a huge factor in the hangover equation. Fight dehydration while you are drinking by having water based drink or a real fruit juice drink in between your alcohol drinks.

If you are female, think about the calories you are consuming before putting the drink to your lips and how hard those extra pounds will be to come off after the night is over. That thought alone is worth an ounce of prevention or more!