A hangover is one of the annoying experiences you have after consuming an excessive amount of alcohol. This usually occurs in the following morning. In Japanese, it is called “Futsukayoi” . Its literal translation is “being drunk on the second day”. As this expression indicates, when you have a hangover, your body is still in the drunk condition. Even worse is that you have unpleasant symptoms such as dizziness, headache, vomiting and so on. The hangover lasts for several hours, sometimes even for a whole day. There is nothing to quickly get rid of hangovers but there are some measures to alleviate the symptoms. One of them is having Japanese tea. High quality Japanese tea, particularly Sencha (high grade Japanese tea) contains a large amount of caffeine, and this helps stimulate and awake your brain. Caffeine also works well to enhance the release of urine, so that caffeine reduces the swelling that occurs in association with hangover.
Besides caffeine, Sencha has other elements effective for hangover. They are catechine, tannin and vcitamin C. Catechine is good to diodorize smells. So, catechine works well to reduce the smell of alcohol. Tannin is the element of the tea’s bitterness. Tannin works well to reduce the absorption speed of alcohol and enhance the release of urine. Viamin C is effective to accelerate the decomposition of acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is a natural element produced by the partial oxidation of ethanol, and this is considered to be the cause of hangovers.
In order to gain the most of the effects of Sencha, it is recommended to make a strong tea with a tea pot.
As mentioned above, Sencha is good to heal hangovers, but there are two points you should pay attention to. First, if you take too much tea at once, your body fluid will be lost quickly due to the amount of the caffeine contained in the tea and this may dehydrate your body. Please be careful to not drink too much tea at once. The second point is to not have cold Japanese tea. When you have a hangover, your stomach tends to be weak. If you drink cold tea, it makes your stomach cold and this can upset the stomach. Please take warm tea instead.