Are YOU suffering from a chocolate hangover?,
Are you suffering the after-effects of having had one too many? I’m not referring to alcohol – I mean overindulging in Easter eggs.
Because just as knocking back booze can make you feel dreadful the next day, so too can overdoing chocolate, although most people affected won’t realise that’s why they feel below par.
In fact, if after the weekend’s Easter celebrations you found yourself today suffering from brain fog, low mood, diarrhoea, bloating, an escalation of your irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms, headaches even a worsening of your aches and pains, it might be that you are suffering from a chocolate hangover.
Okay, so you might not find this term in a medical textbook, but the effects are well defined by science.
It isn’t the chocolate per se that causes problems, but the sugar (and for some people, the milk) in it. And boy, does Easter bring a lot of sugar.
Take a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate buttons Easter egg (which is a ‘small’ hollow chocolate egg filled with a few chocolate buttons) – even this modest offering contains 50.4g of sugar; that’s more than 12 teaspoons. Just picture that for a moment – a mini mountain in front of you on the plate. (The NHS recommends we eat no more than 30g a day of free sugar or sugar that’s been added to foods during manufacture or by consumers).
And let’s face facts – when giving eggs it’s easy to get sucked into the idea that bigger is better, so plenty of people will be potentially scoffing several times that amount.
I know from the patients in my clinic who are struggling with low energy – and a compulsion to eat sugar – that once there’s chocolate is in the house, they feel compelled to eat the lot.
On my advice, one patient who was struggling with sugar ‘addiction’ kept a food diary in which she wrote down what she ate and her motive for eating it. Next to the entry for a chocolate egg she wrote that she ate it ‘because it was all on its own and I felt sorry for it’. But I don’t think it was genuine pity spurring it on – it was a compulsion to eat more sugar, and there’s a reason for that.
When you eat sugar it is quickly broken down in the stomach (although some gets absorbed instantly through the roof of the mouth) and sent to the intestines where the sugar (or glucose) is absorbed and enters the bloodstream.
This is when you get that shot of energy and, for some, a feeling of euphoria as the sugar surges through your body. It’s that moment children run around the room screaming (I know studies have suggested that the sugar doesn’t trigger this reaction but as a parent I beg to differ – and wonder if this research was funded by the sugar industry).
As glucose levels in the blood rise, the pancreas starts to pump out the hormone insulin – your body can’t just leave sugar in the bloodstream as it is destructive, damaging blood vessel walls for example by making them less elastic. The insulin tags along with the glucose like a minder and accompanies it to a cell, acting as a key to get it inside where it can be safely stored until needed.
The more sugar you eat, the more insulin is released, and the result is your energy crashes back down as much of the glucose disappears from your system.
It can leave you feeling depleted of energy and dampen your mood (your brain is hungry for energy and sucks up about 20 per cent of your calorie intake).
Little wonder then that people feel the need for another sugar hit and reach for a bit more of that prettily wrapped egg. They are then caught in a vicious circle of energy highs and lows.
That craving may be especially strong among those taking certain medications such as steroids which make the insulin less effective than normal, leading to sugar highs and then sudden lows.
And this affects the body in other ways, too. The crash in blood sugar can lead to brain fog and the large variations in blood sugar can also trigger headaches in sensitive people. Meanwhile, eating a lot of sugar together with fat, as is found in chocolate, causes water to be sucked into the intestines (sugar attracts water like a sponge) leading to watery stools.
Your excessive chocolate egg intake can also aggravate symptoms of IBS such as bloating, as it has an inflammatory effect. The sugar may disrupt the make-up of bacteria and other microbes in the gut, too.
This inflammatory action is why people with rheumatoid arthritis or other aches and pains may find that after a day of eating Easter eggs their joints hurt more than normal. For these people, eating high sugar foods is like pouring petrol on a fire.
And if you normally eat plant-based milks, eating a lot of milk-based chocolate may leave you with a sensitive gut for a few days because your system just isn’t used to it.
For some people the after-effects will last for an hour or so, but for others it may be as long as a whole day.
How hard you are hit by your ‘chocover’ – and for how long – depends on a number of factors. One is obviously how many eggs you eat and what is normal, sugar-wise, for you.
If you’re tired or stressed it will hit you harder as your body is then less able to maintain stable blood sugar levels. However, if your previous meals were slow-release energy foods (think lentils and vegetables), this slows down the rate at which sugar you eat is broken down and released into energy, meaning you are less likely to get the sugar low.
If you do end up feeling rubbish then treat your system gently as you might if you had had a glass of wine too many. Have protein with every meal as this stabilises blood sugar levels, drink plenty of water to rehydrate and avoid rich, fatty food that might irritate the gut.
I’m not here to be a killjoy – but the next time you get tempted to have a chocolate blowout remember to line your stomach first with a wholesome meal and snap off a bit and put the rest away for another day. I promise you it won’t go off!
Jane Clarke is a registered dietitian; find her at www.janeclarke.com
Interview by Lucy Elkins
