Food and Drink Remedies - Fact or Fiction?
Hangover remedies include everything from "a hair of the dog that bit you" (drinking a little more alcohol the next morning), to burnt toast and black coffee to an over-the-counter product like Chaser. Which of all the endless theoretical remedies actually have truth behind them?
Hair of the Dog
Contrary to popular belief, more of the "hair of the dog that bit you" only delays the inevitable. One of the reasons hangovers are so unpleasant is the liver is still processing the toxins left over from alcohol metabolism. Drinking more alcohol can make the symptoms seem to lessen at first but will only make the situation worse once the liver breaks the alcohol down, because it will have even more toxins to deal with.
Conclusion:
- FICTION - Remedy
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Burnt Toast
At first, the burnt toast remedy may seem that it's actually based on scientific fact. The culprit behind this fictional cure is the carbon in the charred bread. Carbon can act like a filter in the body. While it's true that activated charcoal (which is a treated form of carbon) is used to treat some types of poisonings, it's not currently used to treat alcohol poisoning (something that is vastly different from a regular hangover).
The carbon/charcoal found on burnt toast is not the same as activated charcoal.
Conclusion:
- FICTION - Prevention and Remedy
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Black Coffee
Coffee contains a high amount of caffeine, which is a stimulant and therefore helps fight fatigue. But when the caffeine wears off, a drinker may be even more tired than before. Coffee can help alleviate a pounding head because caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, meaning it reduces the size of blood vessels. This counteracts the effect of the alcohol, which makes them swell, making the head hurt in the first place. Unfortunately, caffeine is also a diuretic like alcohol and can make a drinker even more dehydrated than before, thereby increasing the severity of the hangover. Overall, coffee isn't a good hangover cure.
Conclusion:
- FICTION - Remedy
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Fried or Fatty Foods
Although eating fried or fatty foods the morning after will probably only irritate a drinker's stomach further, eating them before drinking can actually be helpful. Putting anything in the stomach prior to indulging in alcohol helps prevent a hangover, but fatty foods in particular stick to the stomach lining longer and therefore slow down the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. While that might make it take longer to feel the alcohol's effects, it also gives the body more time to process the byproducts and will increase a drinker's chances of feeling decent in the morning. So much so, in fact, that a Mediterranean folk tactic is to take a spoonful of olive oil before drinking alcohol. Eating lighter food such as a fruit smoothie will provide energy and alleviate some symptoms by replenishing the electrolytes the body lost from dehydration.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Prevention
- FICTION - Remedy
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Eggs
Eating eggs the morning after provides energy like any other food, which is the primary benefit. But eggs do also contain large amounts of cysteine, the substance that breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde in the liver's easily depleted glutathione. Therefore, eggs can potentially help mop up the left-over toxins.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Remedy
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Bananas
Eating bananas the morning after a night of heavy drinking provides lost electrolytes like any food would, but it also specifically replenishes the potassium lost to alcohol's diuretic effect. Other potassium-rich foods such as kiwi fruit or sports drinks work just as well.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Remedy
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Water
Replenishing the body's water supply after a night of drinking combats dehydration, and it also helps dilute the leftover byproducts in the stomach. Adding salt and sugar to water helps replace the sodium and glycogen lost the night before. Non-caffeinated, non-carbonated sports drinks can achieve the same effect.
As a prevention method, drinking a glass of water for every alcoholic beverage slows down drinking, providing more time for the body to deal with the alcohol (the body can only process about three-quarters of an ounce of alcohol in an hour). Drinking a few glasses of water before going to bed helps fight dehydration after the body finishes breaking down the alcohol.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Prevention and Remedy
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Fruit Juice
The fructose -- fruit sugar -- in fruit juice helps to naturally increase the body's energy. Studies have proven that it also increases the rate at which the body gets rid of toxins such as those left over from alcohol metabolism. Fruit juice is also a good idea the morning after because it's high in vitamins and nutrients that were depleted the night before because of alcohol's diuretic effect. Vitamin supplements high in vitamins C and B are also effective.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Remedy
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Painkillers
Certain painkillers are more effective at combating a hangover than others. For instance, Excedrin can be helpful for a headache because it combines acetaminophen for the pain and caffeine to reduce the size of the pounding blood vessels; however, prolonged combination of alcohol and acetaminophen has been shown to cause liver damage, and caffeine is a diuretic.
Aspirin is a non-caffeinated pain reliever and is also in a class of anti-inflammatory drugs known as prostaglandin inhibitors. High levels of prostaglandin have been associated with increased hangover severity. In one study, participants who took a prostaglandin inhibitor before bed reported less of a headache and less nausea and thirst than those who had drank the same amount of alcohol but did not take the prostaglandin inhibitor before bed. If you have a sensitive stomach, though, beware -- taking aspirin after drinking can make your stomach hurt even worse.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Prevention and Remedy if non-caffeinated and acetaminophen-free
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Over-the-counter Remedies
Hangover remedies such as Chaser, Sob'r-K Hangover Stopper, RU-21, Berocca and Rebound are highly varied both in price and ingredients, so their effectiveness varies accordingly. They're classified as dietary supplements, meaning:
- They contain vitamins and minerals.
- They don't require a prescription.
- They're usually taken in pill form.
The manufacturers claim these products work because they make use of the effective filtering qualities of carbon to reduce the number of impurities the body has to process (see "Burnt Toast" in the last section for the science on that one). As for RU-21, marketed as a secret KGB pill, the manufacturer says specifically that it is not an anti-hangover pill but a supplement for detoxification. (By the way, its main ingredients -- dextrose, L-Glutamine and vitamin C -- can be found in high amounts in everyday foods). Rebound has the same ingredients as RU-21 plus a few other vitamins and oddities such as "young barley grass juice powder," but it's still basically a multivitamin. Berocca, again, is not a hangover cure -- it's simply a multivitamin that claims to increase energy naturally (through vitamins).
The secret to most of these purported "miracle cures" may in fact be the amount of water a drinker ingests when taking them. Many require taking a pill (or two) with a glass (or two) of water before drinking alcohol, and then continuing to take the pills over the course of the evening with full glasses of water, before bed with a full glass of water, and upon waking with a full glass of water. The hydration alone greatly improves the chances of having little-to-no hangover, and the vitamins in the pills just give it a little, albeit expensive, boost.
Conclusion:
- FICTION - Prevention and Remedy
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Time
The only complete cure for a hangover is time. No matter what a drinker does, the body still has to clean up all the toxic byproducts left over from the evening before. But the above factual remedies can help speed up the process.
Conclusion:
- FACT - Remedy
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