There’s really only one hangover cure, and you’re not going to like it.
There’s not a day goes by when your Back Page correspondent is not thankful for the fact he was born into an age when evidence-based medicine remains in the ascendancy (despite Gwyneth Paltrow’s best efforts).
Some of those old-timey medical cures – bloodletting, trepanning, to name a couple – are truly terrifying to contemplate.
Not quite so painful, but just as disturbing, was the medieval European practice of “hair of the dog” which was a popular treatment for those unfortunate enough to have been bitten by a rabid canine.
It involved applying a potion to the bite which indeed contained some of the hair of the mutt which inflicted the wound.
The concept remains with us today in the guise of a hangover cure: if you regard remaining just a little bit drunk, or staying one step ahead of the worst symptoms, to be a “cure”, then a “hair of the dog” could be just the ticket.
Unfortunately however, if “not getting drunk in the first place” is your worst-case-scenario option, then actual effective hangover cures are pretty thin on the ground, according to a study published in the journal?Addiction.
In the wake of Christmas and New Year celebrations, the popular media is awash with suggested hangover cures. So much so that boffins at King’s College London and the UK’s National Institute for Health Research decided to put a few of them to the test.
The team did a systemic analysis of 21 randomised, placebo-controlled trials which had been variously undertaken to support the efficacy of hangover cures such as Korean pear juice, clove extract, and red ginseng.
What they found was “a shocking lack of rigour” among the trials, including “many instances of imprecise measurements” and an over-reliance on subjects’ self-reported experiences after taking the “cures”.
Of the 21 trials, eight of those only included males, and there was a lack of standardisation across the studies, including variations in the types of alcohol used and whether the cures were accompanied by food consumption or not.
“Our study has found that evidence on these hangover remedies is of very low quality and there is a need to provide more rigorous assessment,” lead author Emmert Roberts said in a media release.
“The most sensible thing to do is either to abstain from alcohol or drink in moderation,” he said.
But for those who were planning to indulge, staying hydrated was likely to help – although it was “not a sure-fire way to avoid a hangover”, he added.
Cheers to that.
If you see something which has you reaching for the single malt, share the good cheer with felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au
