Does exercise cure a hangover and fight alcohol?

You feel like a sofa and junk food, but... wouldn't it be better to sweat all the alcohol and feel better after exercising? We spoke with an expert on the subject.

This New Year's Eve has definitely been memorable. You notice it in your WhatsApp groups, full of photos and videos, and you notice it all over your body. What a hangover . The Las Vegas movie stays amateur. The hangover takes over your entire body and leads you uncontrollably to the sofa, to order "gocha" food at home and do a series marathon on Amazon Prime Video but... have you tried going to the gym to sweat after all what have you drunk?

You are in the indoor cycle and suddenly: "It smells like tequila here". And yes, it's true, you can sweat alcohol as if you were a distillery. "The liver can only metabolize a limited amount of alcohol, about 0.35 liters of beer or 0.15 liters of wine in an hour," says Indra Cidambi, MD, founder and medical director of the Center for Network Therapy, which treats patients with alcohol addiction problems. "When a person consumes alcohol at a rate faster than the liver can metabolize it, alcohol builds up in the blood," says Cidambi.

In this way, the liver will then have to work overtime to break down the ingested alcohol, and what cannot be broken down will be excreted through urine, breath, and sweat.

That said, if we sweat more, does the alcohol that our liver has not been able to break down go away sooner? In theory yes, but in practice it is insignificant since the liver is responsible for processing approximately 90 percent of the alcohol, so that remaining 10%, no matter how much you sweat, will not be representative.

In fact, trying to break a sweat can even make hangover symptoms worse. Alcohol signals the kidneys to produce extra urine, thus accelerating dehydration . If you break a sweat for a number of intervals, it will aggravate that dehydration problem and may even worsen your hangover symptoms.

The best, obviously, not to drink. But drink plenty of water, get isotonic drinks, eat foods with vitamins and mineral salts and above all, stay away from the minibar.

Natural bioactives to prevent hangover symptoms

Two young Spanish doctors are the ones behind Luzzid Recovery, a food supplement that reduces hangover symptoms. A solution that is capable of neutralizing the toxic effects of alcohol and thus minimizing the unwanted consequences of the next day. These capsules, which are taken around the moments of celebration (before, during and just after drinking) contain 27 ingredients, among which are: 10 vitamins and 8 medicinal plants.

"Accustomed to navigating the world of science, we discovered that there are certain active principles that could be found in some species of plants, and that they were effective in relieving certain symptoms of hangovers. We found the subject fascinating and we began to investigate further and more. Over time we had generated a list of ingredients that could be good candidates for a formula against the harmful effects of alcohol, from a novel approach. Alcohol is a toxic substance for our body, and hangovers, the result of damage that it suffers when we consume it. The mechanism of action of our product is achieved with the contribution of micronutrients and bioactive principles that are necessary for the correct metabolism of ethanol, thus helping to prevent the appearance of a hangover."