Head pounding, lights flashing, can’t think straight. It’s the day after drinking and it feels like your brain is punishing you for once again having a few drinks too many. But there’s one surefire solution (other than hair of the dog): Grab the coconut water.
Your head is pounding because alcohol is a diuretic. Your body tried to flush the alcohol out of your system the night before, which is why you urinate excessively when drinking. The only way to avoid the day-after headache is to avoid drinking too much, but by the time your head starts pounding it’s far too late to turn back. Your brain is literally getting smaller.
“Our brain is around 70 percent water, and dehydration can lead to brain shrinkage, which is what causes the pain,” Shona Wilkinson, a nutritionist at nutricentre.com, told the Daily Mail.
Heal your shrinking, pounding, dehydrated brain with refreshing coconut water. Coconut water, which is the liquid inside coconuts, is loaded with sodium, more potassium than a banana, and other electrolytes and sugars. Chugging regular water will only throw your body more off balance, while the coconut water will replenish what your body is lacking while simultaneously hydrating you.
Those are the facts. If coconut water can actually cure a hangover, however, is still debated — as is every hangover cure. And there are lots of purported hangover cures.
“There’s a lot of hype about coconut water,” Lillian Cheung of the Harvard School of Public Health told WebMD. “Yet the research is just not there to support many of the claims and much more research is needed.”
But coconut water definitely won’t make your hangover worse. Besides, it’s much more satisfying than that glass of room- temperature water you left on your nightstand the night before. Why not give coconut water a chance?
