Festival season is upon us, meaning thousands of us from across the UK descend upon the British countryside to spend a long-weekend dancing to live music whilst knee-deep in mud, alongside crowds of likeminded, sweaty festival-goers. Our diet is beer and burgers, our bed is a camp-bed and our showers are non-existent. In spite of this, we’ve had the time of our lives, but on the long journey home we’re suffering the physical repercussions and asking ourselves, “How can I detox and feel better?”
We’re here to help! We’ve caught up with Nutritionist, Ben Coomber, as he reveals some quick-wins and festival fixes. Over to you, Ben…
Firstly, it’s important to get one thing straight: it is impossible to ‘detox’ your body in the sense that a lot of people think you can.
We don’t need detox plans, our bodies are perfectly capable of removing toxins on their own, but what we DO need is to support those natural detoxification pathways by ensuring what we eat, drink and do is in line with what we want to achieve – optimal health and bodily function.
My top 5 tips for getting back to an even keel after a festival are these:
Why?
It’s no secret that one of the prime negative effects of alcohol is dehydration. Alcohol supresses the secretion of the hormone ADH, which is what ensures you can absorb and reabsorb liquid into your cells and bloodstream. When ADH levels are lowered you are also likely to urinate more frequently, losing water more rapidly.
Couple this with the salty food you’ll be eating and, weather dependant, huge amounts of sweat you lose during the weekend, you end up coming home in desperate need of a water.
How?
To get hydrated we need two things:
- water (obviously)
- electrolytes.
People often forget the second part and pile water into themselves before peeing it all back out again. Your cells require electrolytes (salts and trace minerals) to absorb water properly so if you drink what I call ‘naked water’ you need significantly more of it to get hydrated than you do if you add electrolytes to it.
There’s no need to buy expensive sports drinks; just add a pinch of salt and a big squirt of lemon juice to water to radically improve your hydration efficiency.
What happens?
This will allow your body to flush out anything it needs to, will help your skin recover from being out in the wilderness covered in dirt and/or UV paint for a few days, and go a long way to improving the festival hangover!
Why?
Bowel movements are not only important for ridding your body of excess food matter, they are probably the most effective method your body has of ridding you of toxins. Festival food is awful; it’s not really something that’s up for debate. It’s generally very low in micronutrients and one other important thing: FIBRE.
This means that when you get home it’s not uncommon to feel bloated, sluggish and straight up constipated. While it may be tempting to reach for an over the counter laxative it is far better to simply help your body do what it needs to do on its own.
How?
The hydration protocol discussed in my first point will go a long way to help loosen things up but including probiotics like those found in natural yoghurt and soft cheeses is a great way to help boost your beneficial gut flora and therefore improve your digestive process. These bacteria are a vital part of digestion, amongst other functions, which are beneficial to gut and overall health.
If you REALLY want to help your gut bacteria though, fermented foods such as kimchee or sauerkraut are the way to go.
What happens?
Just one serving of sauerkraut, for example, can have billions of these helpful bacteria, which have a profound effect on your gut health. If you want to get your stomach feeling normal after a festival I think this is probably the single best step you can take to achieve that.
Why?
Vitamins and minerals – micronutrients - are an essential part of life and are depleted when our body perceives a stress. Going to a festival which is loud and crowded, dramatically reducing sleeping time, eating nutrient-sparse foods, spending the entire time on your feet and drinking all spiral into what appears to be a massive stress on your body and this can cause, (you guessed it), micronutrient depletion. Rather than ‘ride out’ your post-festival hangover and wallow in self-pity, return to a healthy regime as quickly as you can.
Two of the important roles which micronutrients play in day to day life are aiding in the removal of toxins and also accessing energy from food. So, if you’re feeling lethargic and generally unhealthy after a festival then pay attention to your micronutrient intake.
How?
Before you leave for the weekend, make sure you fill your fridge with a couple days’ worth of fresh and colourful ingredients so that when you get home you’re not so tempted to just call for a pizza.
Why?
I know, exercise is probably the last thing on your mind. I don’t know about you but at my last festival I walked for MILES on uneven and often sticky ground and after the full 3-day stretch I felt like I’d spent the entire time doing paused squats.
BUT
Exercise is incredibly beneficial for helping your body to regulate and reset itself. Increasing your heart beat and boosting blood flow helps to recover from all the stiffness and soreness you get whilst sleeping on the floor, whilst sweating and panting helps remove the alcohol from your system as quickly as possible.
As an added benefit, the endorphin (happy hormone) hit you get post training is a wonderful way to get over the post festival blues and start feeling like life isn’t so bad in the real world after all!
How?
If your legs are really tired and you’re feeling really sore I’m not saying you should hit the squat rack for some heavy three-rep sets, but take it slowly and get back into the swing of things . That said there would be no harm and potentially a large benefit from hitting some moderately high volume full-body work using a moderate weight and full range of motion. No excuses not to get back to BMF!
Keep rest intervals short and get a pump – you’ll feel like a different person.
Why?
Like I’ve mentioned a few times already, one of the prime reasons you’ll feel terrible after attending a festival is the lack of sleep you’re going to endure. Going to bed drunk at 3am after a late night party only to be disturbed through the night by people who don’t sleep, and then waking up when the sun rises and your tent reaches 75 degrees centigrade and you start to cook in your sleeping bag is NOT the best way to handle the most important and restorative part of your day.
Multiply this by three nights and you have a recipe for exhaustion and a sleep debt that is going to take a little while to pay back. Fortunately for most of us, it’s not TOO difficult to go to bed an hour earlier for a week or so, or to get a lie in (or at least a nap) at the weekend – but we don’t just need sleep quantity, we need quality.
How?
To improve your sleep quality you need to get your body and your environment primed for it. Follow these tips:
- Make a Bat Cave. The darker your room is, the better, as you have evolved the ability to sense morning even with closed eyelids, and this causes you to wake up naturally. Great in the morning, crap at 2am when your TV standby bulb is keeping you up or there’s street lights blaring through the windows.
- Stay cool. To reach deep REM stage sleep your temperature needs to drop a degree or two. If you’re roasting in your bedroom this is hard to do.
- Take a hot salt bath. Salt baths help replace stores of magnesium, a mineral which is depleted during stress, exercise and general daily life but can be difficult to acquire via your diet in some cases (especially true for those who exercise regularly as this depletes magnesium a LOT). Magnesium is important for normal sleep function and those who supplement it often report dramatically improved sleep - and vivid dreams to prove it! Salt baths will also increase your skin temperature as blood rushes to the surface meaning that you cool down very quickly when you get out, helping with the previous tip to no end.
As a FINAL benefit to salt baths, they will go a long way towards cleansing your pores of the festival mud that feels like it can hang around for a week.
- Consider eliminating stimulants in the second half of the day. I love coffee as much as the next guy, but caffeine can stay in your system for 6-8 hours, keeping you awake or preventing deep sleep.
- Write a ‘to do’ list for tomorrow. This helps to empty your mind as you know that, come the morning, you will be ‘on’ all those tasks which you are thinking or stressing about.
- Switch off electronics. Electronic screens work on the blue end of the light spectrum. Those of you who studied physics will know that light works on a spectrum of wavelengths and we have blue at one end and red at the other. Blue light is the light which emanates from the sun, too, meaning that these screens can ‘trick’ your body into thinking it’s daylight and waking you up. Red light such as candles can have the opposite effect (you can also get red spectrum bulbs) so reading with one of these options is a great way to help relax before bed.
FINAL THOUGHTS…
Those are my tips to come home and land firmly on your feet. Yes, it may be impossible to detox a body, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything to feel better and recover from a long weekend of partying and debauchery!
Follow these guidelines and you’ll be back to your old self in no time – ready to book the next festival!
