Name: How to Cure a Hangover (Maybe)
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T02:51:25.000Z
Duration: 6 min 19 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Thank you to NHTSA for paying for this video.

Before we go any further, we want to remind you to drive sober.

You probably already know the risks of driving drunk.

You could cause a crash, you could hurt someone,

incur a lot of legal expenses, lose your job.

Don't tell yourself it's not a big deal, 'cause it is.

how to maybe take the edge off your overindulgence,

always, always drive sober -- or get pulled over.

I think it's a rule somewhere that hangover cures

are 10% for the victim and 90% for the amusement of their friends.

Because, let's be real, how could any of this actually work?

But there are things that proper doctors recommend

to avoid or treat the symptoms of a hangover.

Know your limits, stay hydrated, eat something --

it's mostly about using common sense before you start drinking.

But what about those thousands of “cures” that people seem to tout?

Well designing an experiment to study hangovers

is quite the challenge, but it turns out that there are

a few treatments out there with some evidence to back them up.

Your age, sex, your body composition can all affect

Genes seem to contribute almost half of the variability

between people when it comes to hangover symptoms.

Meaning you need to start with a diverse study population

What to give to test subjects can be complicated.

Ethics boards frown on asking your participants to binge drink,

And what, if anything, you mix in with the alcohol can also have effects.

Like, maybe lab number 1 studies pure vodka,

lab number 2 adds a little cranberry juice.

Suddenly, the chemistry is totally different --

and that's nothing next to what you'd see out in the wild.

This makes it hard to design a study that can

both be consistently replicated, and actually mimics

And don't get us started on retrospective studies

accurate accounts of their drinking behavior.

There's a technical term that we're worried about here:

All of this is to say that studying hangovers is tricky.

So even if the evidence for a given hangover cure

looks great in one study, it might not be reproduced

by different researchers with different methods.

That all said, there do seem to be preventatives

or treatments that could head off or treat the worst symptoms,

including some traditional tonics and everyday foods.

One small 2019 study asked hangover-sensitive drinkers

which comes from eating a lot of whole grains and mushrooms,

and zinc, from foods like shellfish or legumes.

And drinkers who reported consuming more of those

nutrients also reported less severe hangovers.

But that's not so much a treatment as a thing

And another caveat -- this was, in fact, a recall study.

And most people don't necessarily remember

As far as actual curatives, one thing that's

A small study from 2014 found that having men drink

red ginseng relieved hangover symptoms compared to a placebo.

A 2017 review of a handful of published studies

also suggested that red ginseng could work as a treatment.

It also cited evidence for a handful of other items like

Siberian ginseng, Korean pear juice, and KSS formula,

which is a traditional Chinese treatment that includes ginger,

None of those treatments relieved all hangover symptoms,

We don't yet know for certain how all these treatments might work

But they might reduce the oxidative stress

Or they might counteract immunological changes

increased production of signaling molecules that promote inflammation.

They also might affect the actual enzymes

the body uses to break down alcohol, like alcohol dehydrogenase.

There's actually some preliminary support for that last one too.

A 2019 study looked at how over 50 types of food,

including fruits, vegetables, cereals, spices, dairy products,

as well as coffee and tea, affect the activity

They found that some foods, like sweet lime juice,

seemed to enhance the activity of these enzymes,

while others, like starfruit, seemed to decrease the activity.

The scientists ultimately came up with a concoction of pear,

sweet lime, and coconut water that enhanced the activity

Though having an effect in a test tube is a long way

from actually doing anything in your body.

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How to Cure a Hangover (Maybe)

evidence

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severe

treat