What to Drink: Bulletproof Alcohol Infographic and Hangover Cures

One of the most common questions about the Bulletproof Diet is whether alcohol is ok. I also hear, “How do I cure my hangover?” as well as “Is alcohol Paleo?” and “What should I drink when I am trying to stay Bulletproof but want to be social?”

Let’s face it – not a lot of us have only one drink on big holidays. Even my most hardcore Bulletproof friends and readers drink every now and then. There is a way to have a drink – or a few – on occasion without harming yourself or even feeling the bad effects. You can even enjoy the buzz safely. I believe it’s optimal from a health perspective to not drink, but from a fun perspective, having a few drinks is relatively harmless.

This post is about how to use biohacking to enjoy alcohol without many side effects (you know, things like cancer, aging, and hangovers).

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Here’s an infographic that distills (get it?) all I know about alcohol, metabolism, and toxins into practical advice you can use:

How To Hack Your Hangover free infographic

5 steps to hack your hangover

Step 1: Choose your poison

Go to any bar and there are hundreds of options, from beer and wine to about a hundred different cocktail combinations. One of the questions I get most often is “which alcohol is best.” All alcoholic beverages are going to dehydrate and cause a minor level of inflammation – it is alcohol, after all. But the type of drink you choose can make a huge difference in how you feel the next morning. Some alcohols have a lot more toxic byproducts from fermentation than others. They are, in order from best to worst: Vodka, gin, tequila, whiskey, other distilled spirits, dry cider, dry champagne, dry white wine, white wines, red wines, dessert wines, beer.

Tragically, beer has the most toxins of any common alcoholic beverage.

Step 2: Hydrate

Before you can eliminate toxins, your body dilutes them with water so they don’t harm you on the way out.  The water either comes from your tissues or water you drink – so drink water. I recommend drinking a glass of water for every serving of alcohol you consume – ideally at the same time or right after.

Step 3: Take vitamin C and Unfair Advantage

Before each drink, take one vitamin C capsule, along with an ampule of Unfair Advantage. This will help block the conversion of alcohol into aldehyde, the most hangover-causing metabolite that also causes very fast aging, wrinkles, etc.

Step 4: Take activated charcoal

Take 4 capsules of activated charcoal after you’re done drinking (or if you chose beer or wine, take 1 capsule with each drink). Take

Step 5: Bonus supplements

Glutathione: Glutathione is your body’s master antioxidant and helps support liver detox and immunity, among other things. Historically, supplementing with glutathione was expensive and not very efficient. The best supplements use a liposomal delivery system so your body can actually absorb it. That’s what I use if I drink. Take 500-1000 mg before bed after drinking.

B vitamins: Alcohol depletes vitamin and mineral stores, and especially your B vitamins. A good B-complex with 3-4 grams of B1 is a must if you’re having more than a couple drinks. Take your B vitamins before you start drinking.

Alpha lipoic acid: ALA is a potent antioxidant on its own and helps your body produce glutathione. Take about 400 mg before you start drinking.

N-Acetyl Cysteine: NAC is a precursor to glutathione and a great nutrient for liver support. Take 600 mg of NAC before you start drinking and before bed that night.

That’s all it takes. If you can only do one or two of these things, I recommend the activated charcoal and hydrations. If you do all the steps, expect to feel even better than you feel on a normal morning. 😉

The wine industry has done a great job telling us that resveratrol is good for us. It might be – I don’t take it regularly because of concerns about it being mildly estrogenic.^[1] But even if it is, you’d need hundreds of bottles of red wine to get the amount of resveratrol in a single pill. So if you love wine, drink it and be sure to take activated charcoal to bind to the extra toxins generated by the yeast fermentation.

There is even some evidence that one drink a day may have protective effects. The evidence I’ve seen is pretty vague and seems to be highly publicized by alcohol vendors, just like winemakers are big cheerleaders for resveratrol.

I learned some of the techniques here from Steve Fowkes, a friend and one of the most brilliant biochemists and metabolic hackers I’ve ever met, who is the author of Smart Drugs II. Technical details about why some of this works is on Steve’s Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute site.

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