After overindulging in alcohol, millions of us have paid the price the next day with the typical hangover symptoms: headache, light-headedness, irritability, anxiety, sensitivity to light and noise, trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, nausea, and vomiting. Hangover symptoms usually wane over 12 hours, but can continue for several days.
The search for a hangover cure has probably been just as fervent as that for the fountain of youth — and lasted much longer.
A 2005 review article published in the medical journal BMJ lists no fewer than 38 alcohol hangover cures from an online search conducted on January 20, 2005, after typing in the search term "hangover cure."
These include several "hair of the dog" drinks (where the sufferer is instructed to drink one alcoholic concoction or another the morning after).
My own search quickly came up with the following folk remedies for hangover: apples, bananas, B-vitamins, chicken soup, feverfew, ginger, honey, kudzu extract, lemon juice, lime juice, milk thistle, peppermint, persimmon, prickly pear extract, raw cabbage, sauerkraut juice, scalp stimulation by pulling on clumps of hair, thyme tea, tomato juice, and — if taken before a binge — vitamin C.
But it seems highly unlikely that any of these remedies work despite claims that they do. The small number of controlled trials of so-called hangover remedies is dwarfed by the abundant "cures" described on the Internet. For the review published in BJM, the author found only 15 randomized controlled trials and discarded seven of them as unsatisfactory.
Only three of the remaining eight were reported by participants to demonstrate some significant improvements in symptoms: tolfenamic acid (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug), gamma-linoleic acid from Breyna officinalis (an herb), and a yeast-based preparation.
And, as the author pointed out, each of these was tested in just a single trial, the sample sizes were small, and the symptom scores used were subjective and unvalidated. The author concludes that "No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcoholic hangover."
Of course, despite the lack of supporting evidence, some, or even many, of the proposed hangover cures may actually work. I suppose there's no harm trying these if you're desperate for relief and until careful testing replaces the present unsubstantiated claims with something better.
I should close, as does every article on the subject, by stating that there is only one way to be sure you won't need to try one of these cures: Don't drink too much on St. Patrick's Day or on any other day.
