Whenever people hear the word “hangover”, they normally think about that splitting headache they get after drinking too much alcohol. But did you know that you can also suffer from a hangover after eating too much sugar? Yes, sugar hangovers are a real thing, and they can be a real pain to deal with! Lucky for you, they’re not that hard to treat, or to prevent from happening at all.
Below you'll find out everything you need to know about sugar hangovers and if you are suffering from one, the best way to get rid of it fast.
How Do You Get A Sugar Hangover?
When you consume eat food, the proteins, fats, carbohydrates and sugars start to be digested. The sugars and carbs convert to glucose creating a rise in blood sugar levels. To compensate for this, your pancreas secretes insulin that helps balance the sugar levels in your blood, allowing you to metabolize the carbohydrates into much-needed energy.
Normally, your pancreas does an excellent job at keeping your blood sugar levels in equilibrium, but it’s not perfect and it does run the risk of overcompensating.
Eating too much sugar all at once or drinking something that has high sugar content causes an unnatural blood sugar spike, which forces your pancreas to secrete way more insulin than is actually needed to process these sugars.
A sugar hangover happens when there’s leftover insulin in your blood, and there’s no more or very little glucose left for it to burn, giving you low blood sugar. This sugar rollercoaster effect is known as reactive hypoglycemia.
Reactive hypoglycemia pretty much has the same effects of normal hypoglycemia, that can include headaches, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, excessive sweating, and hunger. People who suffer from sugar addiction are particularly vulnerable to reactive hypoglycemia.
How to Cure a Sugar Hangover
The most important thing you’d want to do when you’re suffering from a sugar hangover is by balancing your blood sugar levels. You can do this by any number of means, including:
Keeping Yourself Hydrated
Water is a good cure-all for many conditions that affect your body’s equilibrium. We’re mostly made of water, after all. Drinking water also helps flush out your system and helps alleviate inflammation, which is common when you’re having a sugar hangover, allowing you to reboot. Squeezing a bit of lemon or adding apple cider vinegar into warm water can also alkalinize the body and help balance your sugar levels out.
Balancing Your Meal
While it might be tempting to forgo any big meals after eating way too much sugar the night before, you’re actually putting yourself at risk of getting blood sugar dips throughout the day. This can make you legitimately sicker than before.
Instead, get a good, hearty meal that’s full of fats, protein and fiber. These three are excellent at balancing out the sugar in your body, and can help curb your cravings, at least for a while.
Protein helps keep your insulin secretion in check, unsaturated fats improve your body’s insulin resistance, and fiber helps improve your overall digestion and helps you better absorb nutrients.
Adding Cinnamon to Your Morning Coffee
If you’re like most people, you’d normally take coffee after a day of too much drinking, and this works well with sugar hangovers, too. While you’re at it, add a bit of cinnamon into your cup. Cinnamon is known for its ability to stabilize a person’s blood sugar levels. As a matter of fact, cinnamon supplements can be used as complementary treatment for type 2 diabetes.
Eating Greens
Another good way to balance your sugar levels out is by eating dark leafy greens. Leafy vegetables, like spinach are rich in vitamins and minerals that can help offset the effects of lower blood sugar levels.
While you still suffer some of the effects of low blood sugar, you can still more or less function normally. Eating greens can also help alleviate the inflammation you get that’s associated with having a sugar hangover.
Getting Exercise
One of the most underrated ways to balance out your sugar levels is exercise. Exercise can not only help you out in the short term, by temporarily increasing your body’s insulin sensitivity, it can also improve your blood circulation and overall cardiovascular health in the long term.
Exercising regularly helps your body to better accommodate sugar before and after an actual workout, and the muscle contractions you get during exercise helps you metabolize glucose much more efficiently.
Getting help
Sugar addiction is one of the biggest addictions in the world today and there are literally millions of people addicted to the white stuff, often without knowing. If you think you might be eating too much sugar and would like to cut down there are plenty of blogs and tips on this website and if you would like to cut it out of your diet altogether and experience the many health benefits a low or no sugar diet can bring, you can sign up to my 21 Day Sugar Detox Program here.