My best friend provides me with endless amounts of helpful support and wisdom, but one of her most enduring pieces of advice dates back to our college days, when we used to do some pretty irresponsible drinking. We’d mix spirits, we’d drink beer before liquor, we’d down sugary shots practically designed to give us pulverizing headaches … pretty much everything you’ve heard you shouldn’t do while consuming alcohol, we did.
To fight off the inevitable hangovers that would happen the next day, my friend came up with a plan that she enforced with ruthless efficiency. After any of us finished an alcoholic beverage, she’d hand us a full glass of water and insist that we drink the whole thing. “Sandwiching” a glass of water between any two boozy libations was a hard-and-fast rule, and if we forgot and tried to order two back-to-back cocktails, we’d hear her voice over our shoulders: “Water sandwich, water sandwich, water sandwich.”
I can still hear my bestie chanting “water sandwich, water sandwich” in the back of my mind every time I go out for drinks, and, as a regular consumer of water sandwiches, I definitely feel like they’ve helped me fight off some potentially devastating hangovers. But I find myself wondering whether the water sandwich works because I believe it works, or whether there’s some scientific basis for its hangover-fighting power.
To get the answers, I consulted a group of medical doctors, and they gave the full scoop on how water sandwiches can impact alcohol’s effect on the body.
A glass of water between each alcoholic drink can reduce dehydration.
The doctors I interviewed all pointed out that dehydration plays a major role in the rough morning after. “Drinking a glass of water between alcoholic beverages is a good way to decrease the dehydration that often comes from alcohol consumption. Alcohol acts as a diuretic, a substance that activates the kidneys to produce more urine, resulting in electrolyte and water loss,” explained Dr. Krystal Green, a primary care physician at Inspira Health in New Jersey.
Green went on to say that “this loss of fluid contributes to dehydration and may leave people feeling tired, thirsty and dry the next morning.”
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But if you’re drinking a glass of water in between each alcoholic beverage, you can “dilute the alcohol concentration [in the body] and dampen the dehydration effects that cause the hangover,” said Dr. Ronald Lee, a psychiatrist currently practicing in Massachusetts. Also, because alternating water and alcohol will slow down your alcohol consumption and make you feel “full” more quickly, water “may reduce the total amount of alcohol consumed over time,” noted Dr. Sham Singh, a psychiatrist and holistic medicine expert at WINIT Clinic.
‘Water sandwiches’ may help ease hangovers, but they won’t get rid of them entirely.
Water sandwiches can make up for the dehydrating effects of alcohol, but the doctors reminded us that dehydration isn’t the only cause of painful hangovers.
“Although water may make you feel better in general, it will not slow the metabolism of alcohol into acetaldehyde, a poisonous byproduct that leads to hangovers,” said Dr. Jasleen Salwan, a physician specializing in internal medicine and addiction medicine with Start Your Recovery.
Acetaldehyde will form in the body regardless of whether you drink water, so water sandwiches might slow down or lessen the hangover, but they won’t banish it completely. Also, water can’t “restore depleted electrolytes and glucose — prime factors that make the hangover more severe,” Singh said.
At the end of the day, there’s only one tried-and-true rule in place to prevent hangovers in all cases. As Green said, “The less alcohol you drink, the less likely you are to get a hangover.”
Time is the only surefire cure for a hangover, but there are a few shortcuts that can speed up the recovery process.
Water sandwiches can be a helpful tool to take the edge off your nastiest hangovers (before they happen), and the doctors shared a few other ideas that may cushion the pain.
Singh urged readers to “eat a meal rich in healthy fats, proteins and complex carbohydrates before starting to drink alcohol,” as this can “slow alcohol absorption and limit variations in blood sugar levels, which can produce bad crashes leading to that fatigue and nausea.”
Also, drinking liquids rich in electrolytes, such as coconut water or sports drinks, before or after drinking alcohol can “help replace sodium, potassium and magnesium liquefied due to the diuretic effect of alcohol, which eventually can contribute to better muscle function and [reduce] headaches,” he added.
Finally, Singh said, “Good, restorative sleep is very important because alcohol disrupts REM cycles and results in a poor quality of sleep, which can lead to a much longer period of fatigue.”