A Sure-Fire Hangover Cure

The scientific name for hangover is veisalgia, which comes from the Norwegian “kveis” meaning “uneasiness following debauchery” and the Greek “algia” meaning “pain”.  This combination perfectly captures the experience: debauchery followed by pain. Understanding veisalgia is essential for anyone seeking a hangover cure – because you cannot fix what you do not understand.

Hangover symptoms from drinking alcohol typically occur 8 to 16 hours after drinking ceased and include:

• Thirst
• Tiredness
• Headache
• Dizziness or faintness
• Nausea
• Stomach ache
• Racing heart
• Loss of appetite

These symptoms are not random. They are the predictable result of alcohol metabolism. Any genuine hangover cure must address the underlying biochemical process – but few remedies even attempt to do so.

The reason why there have been so many unsuccessful hangover cures through the ages is that there is a fundamental reason for the hangover which cannot be “cured”. The main cause of hangover is the alcohol itself. In whatever form – vodka, beer, wine – excessive alcohol will cause a hangover. No amount of clever marketing or folk remedies can change this basic fact.

The alcohol you consume saturates the liver so that the endogenous methanol formed in the gut, and methanol found in some beverages and fruits, is no longer eliminated and builds up in the blood to higher and higher levels. This is the key to understanding why the search for a hangover cure has been so fruitless.

Once you stop drinking alcohol, it continues to be eliminated by the liver until about 8 to 16 hours later. The BAC is then so low that the liver enzymes are no longer saturated by alcohol, and the elimination of methanol finally occurs. The problem is that the metabolites of methanol – formaldehyde and formic acid – are toxic and cause the hangover symptoms. This is why a hangover cure cannot simply involve drinking more alcohol. That would only delay the inevitable.

One study of 9 female and 11 male social drinkers by Bendtsen, Jones and Helander (1998) found that the peak of methanol excretion in the urine coincides with the time that the hangover symptoms are the most severe. This scientific evidence confirms that hangovers are caused by toxic methanol metabolites – not by dehydration, not by low blood sugar, not by any of the other myths that have spawned so-called hangover cure remedies.

A sure-fire hangover cure which has prevented me from having a hangover for over 30 years is quite simple: don’t binge drink! This is the only true hangover cure that works every time.

Binge drinking has been defined as 4+5+, which means at any one drinking occasion – such as New Year’s Eve – do not consume more than 4 drinks for a woman or 5 drinks for a man. This is the closest thing to a genuine hangover cure that science can offer.

The most extreme example of not binge drinking is drinking only non-alcoholic beverages, which will also prevent hangovers – and provide a perfect hangover cure by eliminating the cause entirely.

The search for a hangover cure has consumed human imagination for millennia. But the answer is simple: the only true hangover cure is moderation. The science is clear. Methanol metabolites cause the pain, and alcohol itself is the culprit. No amount of greasy food, coffee, or hair of the dog will change that. The next time you wake up with a pounding headache and nausea, remember that the best hangover cure is to prevent it in the first place.

References

• Bendtsen, P., Jones, A.W., and Helander, A., “Urinary Excretion of Methanol and 5-Hydroxytryptophol as Biochemical Markers of Recent Drinking”, Alcohol and Alcoholism, 33: 431-438, 1998
• Jones, A.W., “Elimination Half-Life of Methanol during Hangover”, Pharmacology and Toxicology, 60: 217-220, 1987
• Rodda, L.N., Beyer, D., Gerostamoulos, D., and Drummer, O.H., “Alcohol Congener Analysis and the Source of Alcohol: A Review”, Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 9: 184-207, 2013

Note:
The unmodified term alcohol refers to ethanol or ethyl alcohol. BAC is the acronym for blood alcohol concentration. [statement, courtesy of Kurt DUbowski]