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Need a cure for hangover? Try one of these
By Deborah Scoblionkov
January 1, 2003
Nobody deliberately sets out to suffer a hangover. But nearly every human who imbibes alcohol has experienced the malady at least once in his or her life.
Some ethnic groups are even predisposed to the ill effects of over consumption, with Asian women more intolerant of alcohol because of a genetic enzyme deficiency.
Hangovers are caused by a combination of the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism (acetaldehyde), dehydration, and Vitamin A, B (particularly Bc) and C depletion.
There is a way to prevent the morning-after effects of over indulgence: namely, don’t drink so much. But New Year’s Day is too late to consider the prophylactics, so I’ll cut to the chaser before exploring the preventative measures.
Every culture has a cure for overdoing alcohol, but some of the supposed remedies are nearly as loathsome as the condition itself.
One 16th-century English hangover cure involved a mixture of raw eels and almonds, ground to a paste and forced down with chunks of bread. A traditional Welsh hangover breakfast is roast pig’s lung, while Scandinavians swear by a sauna and a massage.
Ancient Assyrians mixed crushed swallows’ beaks with myrrh, and Romans ate fried canaries after a big night of gluttony, orgies and drunkeness.
In Morocco, inhaling the smoke of burning fossils is said to restore one’s well-being. Dabbing rose oil on one’s temples is said to relieve the pounding headache (the result of dilated blood vessels in the brain).
An American tradition from the Wild West recommends bot water mixed with jackrabbit droppings. Some cowboys swear by a “prairie oyster”– a concoction that always includes a raw egg – but doctors warn against it because of the risk of salmonella poisoning.
Mongolians drink tomato juice with a pickled sheep’s eye. Eating pickled herring is said to prevent liver damage.
When rehydrating oneself, fruit juices are better than plain water because the glucose elevates blood-sugar levels and helps replenish lost electrolytes.
Some cultures recommend avoiding greasy foods, while others encourage a big eggs-and-bacon breakfast, arguing that fats can soothe the stomach lining.
Finally, there is the “hair of the dog” remedy. The name comes from a British fold treatment for dog bits: Placing on the wound a hair of the dog that bit you helps it to heal, the story goes. So for a hangover, that philosophy prescribes another drink.
My own panacea is the Italian bitter liquor Pernet-Branca. Made from grape alcohol blended with more than 40 herbs and spices, including myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom and saffron, this restorative has an aroma and flavor that are quite vile. But a shot is remarkably effective at curing the morning-after blues.
New anti-hangover products appear every year like snake oil, but this year there’s a hole bonanza of vitamin-based cures fueled by the Internet.
One product marketed in Britain is called Zetox and is made from volcanic dust, or zeolite, to filter out the toxins in one’s system.
Chaser, another product in pill form, comes in two formulas, one for standard hangovers and a “super-charged” version for red wine headaches. Chaser contains calcium carbonate and vegetable carbon and Vitamin B2. These elements work together, the maker claims, to absorb by-products called congeners that give alcohol its color and flavor but also cause headaches.
I popped a sample of Chaser before a recent holiday party and was pleasantly surprised at how perky I felt the next morning. (For more information, visit www.winechaser.com)
But no remedy is as sobering as the prospect announced by researchers in the journal New Scientist. Molecular biologists at Stellenbosch University’s Institute of Wine Biotechnology in South Africa speculated that injecting genetic engineering into the wine-making process could render the hangover a disease of the past, eradicated just like polio and smallpox.
This sounds like some slick public-relations maneuver to win acceptance of genetic modification by targeting the universally detested malady.
It seems to me that the key to tackling hangovers from the beginning is behavior modification, not genetic modification. Drink water, or any nonalcoholic beverage, between drinks. Limit yourself to one drink per hour, and you’ll feel better in the morning.
Just in case, pop a vitamin supplement before you take your first drink. Or keep a bottle of Ferent-Branca on hand.
back
A recent survey shows it takes an average of just 3.2 drinks to cause
hangover symptoms. For 10 percent of people it takes one or two.
What causes hangovers? The main culprit is congeners.
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