Food Hangover
Written by Donna Aston
THROBBING head, unsettled tummy, noise sensitivity, fear of light and terror of conversations.
It sounds like a rare disease but is actually a regular, often all-too-regular, condition known as a hangover.
Most people are familiar with alcohol hangovers. The morning after the night before is understood, if not familiar, to most of us. Hangovers are so debilitating that the sensible grow out of the habit and restrict drinking copious amounts of alcohol to Christmas or parties that are either too dull or too good.
Less well understood, but equally debilitating, are food hangovers especially when you have a typically clean and healthy diet.
A bout of chocolate cake and fish fingers when you spend most days eating vegetables and lean meat can send your body into shock with the negative effects lasting for days.
We may look at foods containing a lot of sugar, refined carbohydrates and highly processed fat as a welcome and occasional treat but just how damaging is it to indulge? Will it really cause that much harm?
Whether the habit becomes regular or occasional the effects are real. The more regular, the more long-term the damage may be leading to a range of chronic illnesses.
Some of the effects from eating the wrong foods include fluid retention, impaired liver function and your whole digestive system ceases to function effectively.
Most people will be familiar with these symptoms after a night at Seven Eleven. After a less than perfect sleep, the next day begins in a groggy haze, nothing is as it seems, you can't stop drinking and a day of diet piety doesn't help.
There are so many disruptions bad food can cause to your body that it takes several days to get back to normal. This means that if you indulge every week-end, you spend half the week recovering.
I sometimes wish I could turn people inside out so they could see what these foods really did to their organs but most people remain oblivious because they don't accept what they don't see. It is the danger of ignorance.
It's only when they observe an outbreak of pimples, puffy eyes, flakey skin and sometimes weight gain that they begin to connect the eating behaviour with the body's response.
When you have experienced a body that has healthy function and provides loads of energy, rarely or never breaks down with illness and helps you maintain mental and emotional clarity, you can start to take it for granted that your food will continue to digest well - even the rubbish. An inflated sense of body power can develop.
But the healthier you are, the greater the contrast when toxic food enters your bloodstream. Blood sugar levels go haywire, energy levels fall and it takes longer than normal to digest food.
It is not only rubbish that will cause these symptoms. Eating too much of any food, whether dairy, wheat, sugar or highly processed fats which are often found in bakery items and chocolate or sugary drinks, will be detrimental.
The all-too-common super-sized juices may be a favourite among teenagers in particular but they are among the more insidious foods, providing such a concentrated form of sugar that they can tamper with blood sugar levels to the point that sugar becomes an addiction.
So when you gaze at the French pastries in your favourite cafe, inhale the aroma wafting through the air vents at Darrell Lea or just long for a cookie, think ahead and think well. It really isn't worth it.
No-one has any sympathy for a hangover.
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