Six Green Hangover Remedies

By Marissa Moss

Some might say if you have a hangover, you might already be green (not the environmental kind of green, ahem). But if you want to cure that throbbing headache from last night’s Christmas party or holiday get-together, take a few suggestions from Tree Hugger’s list of the top green hangover remedies. Because if you are going to be green in the face, you might as well be green all the way. ‘Tis the season…


1. Yoga
Athletic activity might sound a)exhausting and b)nauseating, but yoga is actually one of the quickest way to rid the toxins from your body. Try a routine of a couple of sun salutations followed by a series or moderate twists – literally “wring” the remaining alcohol from your body. Check out tips from Planet Green on how to make your yoga greener.

2. Wheatgrass
While a thick green juice might seem less than appetizing, take a shot of this curing beverage to balance all the not-so-curing ones you downed last night. Found at your local natural foods shop, wheatgrass’ chlorophyll content and detoxifying effects are a surefire cure.

3. Rescue Remedy
This product (which is made 100% naturally from spring water infused with wild flowers), which celebrities use for its calming effects (red carpet=nerve overload) is also known to help soothe a hungover system. A couple of drops in your water before bed and a pastille in the morning is the natural technique some swear by.

4. Coconut Water
Gatorade or other electrolyte-enhanced beverages are a common antidote. But since you’ve already been taxing the liver, why continue with the artificial colors and flavorings found in these sugary drinks? Young coconut water boasts electrolytes and more potassium than a banana, and is usually not packaged in polluting plastic.

5. Play in the Snow
A cold shower is a time honored remedy. But why waste the water? Lay your sad little head in the snow for the same effects. And make the snow look pretty while you are at it, with a nice imprint of your misbehaved body! If you must shower, read TH's tips on saving water.

6. Hair of the dog
If all else fails, have another cocktail. My favorite? A nice Dubonnet aperitif, which has just enough alcohol (but not too much) to take the edge off. I like to mix a little in a glass with organic orange juice, home squeezed from the farmer’s market for a little vitamin C.

FOR THE GREENER GOOD

by Annette Ferstenberg

Contributing Writer
CTNGREEN.com/blog

With the economy imploding, sales of homes down, mortgage interests up, Iraq warring, unemployment rising, Wall Street plummeting, lifelong savings evaporating and natural disasters devastating, why should we care about going green? Why should we focus on our measly individual and collective efforts to impact positively on the environment for a future we’re not even sure we’ll have when we’re barely surviving the present? Why should we conserve our collective energy when expending it, assuming the funds, on flights of fancy like cars and trips will at least help to distract us from our woes?

We all know that harbingers of gloom and doom don’t serve to motivate people. In fact, human nature generally wants to sprint in the other direction, for why bother trying when the outcome is so grave? And we all know equally well that being flogged with admonishing, nagging “shoulds” makes us all revert to our childhoods, dig in our heels and do the proverbial opposite. We also know that the sober, empirical, factual approach delineating the scientific reasons for action can just as easily be countered with alternative theories using the same or contradictory facts, until the experts have confused us into a headache or lulled us all to sleep.

So why go green?
I have a simple answer: because it’s good to be green. Nothing makes a person feeling powerless amid chaos feel better than to assume control over at least one aspect of his or her life. We may be unable to stop global warming or prevent the next flood, but each of us individually can start with one area of our life and change something about it that will make a difference, something discrete and manageable, like driving the speed limit or taking shorter showers or buying fuel efficient appliances or turning off air conditioners, all of which are GOOD for us anyway because they translate into financial savings, even apart from their contribution to the environment. And that action multiplied by millions, or better yet, billions of others, will make an exponential difference, will be GOOD for the environment as a whole. Actions having positive outcomes are reinforcing; thus, the more we see we’re saving money or feeling good about ourselves, the more we’ll be motivated to do more, which will then make us feel even better, save even more money, feel even more in control, and so on and so on. It’s like a diet or learning a new skill: you start small and build from there.

But there’s another even more important reason why going green is good. Today’s world is a paradox, huge, bureaucratized, specialized and compartmentalized on the one hand, and global, interconnected, interdependent and symbiotic on the other. Industrialization, manufacturing, commerce, finance, technology and the Internet have made the world very small indeed.

Our shrinking resources have made the world even smaller. And, in spite of hatred and the multitudinous reasons that war, terrorism, abrogation of human rights, genocide, colonialism, totalitarianism, imperialism and their ilk exist on the planet, we all have one salient thing in common that transcends all of that venom: we all have to live here together. And that is GOOD. That is what makes going green good.

Conserving our planet transcends race, gender, ethnicity, religion, political orientation; it is the one characteristic we share – we reside on this planet at the will and whim of Mother Nature and because of that, Darwinism aside, we have to cooperate to preserve her. It is the one hope for our future that can unite us. Global warming is thus a paradox, too. It can damn us but, if we work together, it can save us – on more than a physical level, for, just as it takes baby steps to change our environmental behavior, those same steps can be catalysts to changing our socio-political behavior. Going green can be the global movement of the 21st century, much like the movements that defined and transformed the twentieth—for the better. So, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving green a chance.