With festival season coming to a close, race-goers and music fans have come up with many weird and less than wonderful ways to avoid that dreaded hangovers. But the question is, do any of them work? This week, Marie Madden looks at the causes behind those morning-after blues and what you can do to minimise the after-effects of that great night out.

Also known as veisalgia, the hangover is a regular presence in most of our lives. Whether it's that extra few glasses of wine with the girls or too many pints during the soccer, any night of excess is destined to leave you blue the following morning. With old wives' tales of raw egg yolks and newfangled miracle remedies promising to leave you symptom-free, it is hard to know what is the best approach.

In the search for the best hangover cure, the first step is understanding what you are dealing with. The most common symptoms of hangovers include headaches, nausea, sensitivity to light and noise, and thirst. However, too much alcohol or drugs can also leave you with elevated body temperature, lack of concentration, irritability and erratic motor functions, meaning that getting any work done is a mission impossible. A lucky 25 to 30 per cent of people are resistant to hangover symptoms, while the remaining sufferers will experience varying levels of discomfort.

A hangover is usually caused by a number of factors, all associated with heavy alcohol consumption. The ethanol in alcohol causes a dehydrating effect by triggering increased urine production, and all those trips to the toilet end up causing you to experience headaches, dry mouth, and lethargy. Dehydration also causes the brain to shrink away from the skull slightly, while alcohol's effect on the stomach lining can account for the nausea felt when hungover.

Another factor contributing to a hangover are the products from the breakdown of ethanol via liver enzymes. Ethanol breakdown in the body triggers a chain reaction, which results in the liver's ability to supply glucose to tissues being reduced. Because glucose is the primary energy source of the brain, this lack of glucose contributes to hangover symptoms such as fatigue, weakness and mood disturbances, as well as decreased attention and concentration. In addition, it is thought that by-products of the alcoholic fermentation, known as congeners, exaggerate many of these symptoms. Such congeners include zinc or other metals added primarily to sweet liqueurs to enhance their flavour. It is for this reason that people are often advised to drink clear distilled spirits such as vodka to minimise the potential for a hangover. Red wines have more congeners than white wines, and some people note less of a hangover with white wine.

So with all the information in mind, its time to get back to the main question - what can I do to make Monday morning that little bit more bearable? Well according to a US clinical study on hangover prevention, there are a number of things that you can do to make yourself feel better.