What’s the Best Way to Exercise When You’re Hungover?

If your method of dealing with a hangover is to lie on the couch all day or do a The best chef-decent breakfast sandwich, or sitting cross-legged on the floor of an open shower while eating a cold pickle (started by a wacky friend of mine), you can skip the rest of this article. Allocate your five minutes elsewhere.

However, there are some of us who feel a strange compulsion to exercise the day after a big night out. I usually shoehorn myself into some kind of activity, for example, even if I’m enduring a Mount Rushmore headache; And on certain occasions, I actually treat hangover exercise as a rite of passage. (During wedding weekends, I score a non-negotiable four-mile run the morning of the event, in an attempt to flush out rehearsal dinner toxins. I wish I could say other guests find this charming.)

In general, there are three reasons why people decide to exercise the day they have a hangover: they want to cure it, they want to continue with some type of physical activity, or they simply want to feel better about themselves. All fair. But science tells us that only the third reason has any weight, and even then, exercising at any kind of intensity can backfire.

For starters: exercise doesn’t cure a hangover. “Sweat it” is a common colloquialism, but it’s a misrepresentation of how the body gets rid of alcohol. You can’t ride a bike and expect little drops of Casamigos to fall off your forehead, like those old Gatorade commercials. Some Most of the alcohol breaks down into toxins that leave the body through breathing and sweating (which is why you might be smelling tequila the next morning), but most of it is excreted as urine.

Remember, alcohol is the ultimate diuretic. Leaves the body dry. The “cure” for a dehydrated body is definitely not an activity that further dehydrates the body, such as exercise or other forms of physical self-care such as visiting a sauna or steam room, it is drinking gallons of water and replenishing your electrolytes. . Many look for a kind of “work hard, play hard” ritualism when exercising during a hangover, but ultimately it’s a foolish move that draws even more fluid from already scarce organs.

Our heads hurt as much as during a hangover because the brain prioritizes sending water to the parts of the body that need it. As a result, the dura (thick connective tissue that covers the brain and spinal cord) shrinks, making you feel like you’ve been hit with a baseball bat. He always returns to normal at some point in the day, but tends to reward your cooperation.

Clearly, for some of us this is easier said than done. Hardcore trainees (runners, Peloton owners, CrossFit types) often espouse a “no days off” mentality, where exercising as close to normal as possible (no matter how miserable the body feels) comes across as a badge of honor. There is also a logistical element. Obviously, adults are more likely to look for it Thursday through Saturday. But that doesn’t mean they should burn through the mornings where they actually have time away from the laptop and time to do a couple of the week’s toughest workouts. Why laze around all day, when you could take a 30-minute Tabata ride?

The correct answer here would be to prevent a hangover in the first place, but that’s a tall order for most of society anyway, and especially for those who exercise frequently. According an amazing report published late last year by The Copper Institute in Dallas, men with higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are more than twice as likely to drink a “moderate amount” of alcohol (up to 14 drinks per week) than their less fit peers. . Why? There are a couple of theories: Fit people tend to be well connected within fit communities (which often get together to drink), while scientifically both intense exercise and alcohol turn on similar reward centers within the body. brain.

One through the line seems to be a maximalist approach to the week. It’s the art of living life at a thousand miles an hour, basically. There’s a sense that booze-filled nights are the fun, and the exercise is there to A) offset the fun and B) set up the next round of fun. But this mindset, in addition to being downright exhausting, ignores that it’s almost impossible to exercise effectively when you’re hungover.

Consider: alcohol ingestion inhibits protein synthesis, which in medical parlance means good luck gaining muscle after a big night out. The body is simply not equipped to power those crucial processes. I’d rather rest. A hangover isn’t just a stomach ache or a headache; it’s a litany of symptoms, many of which stem from a horrible night’s sleep. When you sleep five hours or less, your breathing rate and resting heart rate will increase, and your blood oxygen and heart rate variability will decrease, all of which will make it difficult to max out the bench with one rep. press the next day, or complete a worthwhile track workout.

However, that doesn’t mean the day is lost. It just requires a rethink of what brand (and level) of activity should be on the table while you’re hungover. because the exercise may help you beat the hangover, from a psychological/biochemical perspective. The days after that don’t offer much in the way of happy hormones. “Hanging anxiety” really sets in once the endorphins from alcohol consumption have fled your system. But exercise is one of the best mood boosters out there.

You’ll almost certainly feel better about yourself if you find a way to add movement to a hungover day. And you may learn a valuable training lesson along the way: It’s possible to exercise and rest your body at the same time. Reliable rest-day workouts can look like a gentle stretching session, a 15-minute low-impact spin class, a mile run around a local track, or even a simple walk around your neighborhood.

It might not sound like exercise to you, especially if you’re used to hard training, but come on, you have to pick your battles. Performance gains are realized from progressive loading. How could you possibly add to an exercise program on a day when your body is running low? Save it for a day or two later, and find some level of rest and contentment in activities that get you off the couch and into the greenery, without making things difficult for your body or brain.

The critical key to deciding what type of hangover exercise works best for you is to make sure you don’t break out in a dripping sweat or take in more than you can chew. That means no hot yoga for the former, no heavy lifting for the latter. I have a few weddings coming up this year, and I’d still like to go running on the big day. But I’m not fooling myself anymore. A jog around the hotel, no matter how sweaty, can’t put me out of my misery.