We’re just a few days away from the New Year’s Party and all the good things coming with it. Friends and families getting together, making new resolutions, having a great time…This is the time of the year when we’re partying the best. But of course there are some things we should not forget, such as how to avoid a hangover.

Doctors have long urged us to avoid alcohol as much as possible or drink it in very low quantities. Or else, we risk ruining our fun because of a hangover with many unpleasant symptoms. It is true that hangovers go away with 8-24 hours, but the symptoms such as thirst, headache and muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, rapid heartbeat, sensitivity to light and sound, dizziness, shakiness, mood disturbance, depression, irritation or anxiety and fatigue, make us feel miserable.

What else? Well, as our body absorbs alcohol, the stomach lining can get irritated. Also, we should not forget the way alcohol acts on our brain. It slows down our mental processes making us swagger and talk after a few drinks too many. Alcohol is a mild diuretic; makes us lose water and gets us dehydrated.

Therefore, we should not have more than three to five drinks if we’re women and over five to six if we’re men if we want to avoid hangovers. And yet there is no magic formula that tells us how much we can safely drink to avoid a hangover. Drinking on an empty stomach, using other drugs or tobacco – nicotine, family history of alcoholism, can also trigger a hangover.

On a long run, “excessive alcohol hurts the liver. It can give you a fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis. It can also cause gastritis and pancreatitis,” says Dr. R G Wiseman Pinto, professor and head of pathology department at the Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim.

What to do to avoid hangovers? One simple thing we could do is never mix drinks, because it’s extremely dangerous. We should stick to the same type of alcohol and have some food between our drinks. The food helps in delaying the absorption of alcohol in our system.

People who have to work the next morning should keep the headaches and nausea of a hangover at bay by drinking fruit juices and beverages containing glucose throughout the next day.

Also, if the party is not at our own home, then we should make sure we have a driver who has not drunk and who can drive us home safely. According to the most recent statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, by the time Americans finished ringing in the year 2007, 54 people were dead from alcohol-related traffic crashes. Hopefully, we won’t start the next year with so many casualties.