Hangover preventions & cures that actually work
Verdict: More fun than function. Reading the small print, a patch has 12mg of vitamin C – a fraction of the NHS’s 40mg daily requirement – so I can’t help thinking you’d be better eating a piece of fruit. But if your hangover radar only seeks out those golden arches, the patch gets something good in you. I think.
The food
The science: Forget burgers, carb comas and any food too filthy to Instagram. In a study, Australian researchers found the food that significantly reduces hangover symptoms is – drumroll – a pear. Caveat: not our ten-a-penny British Conference pears, only Asian ones. Why? Asian pears act on two enzymes – alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) – to inhibit how much booze we absorb or speed up how quickly we eliminate it. Clever.
The test: I was about to make a ‘pear of the dog’ joke, but you must consume them before drinking. The study used 220ml of Korean pear juice, which I couldn’t find anywhere apart from some dodgy-looking cans on Amazon – but lead researcher Professor Manny Noakes says eating Asian pears should work. Four supermarkets later, I finally find a three-pack in Morrisons for £1.28. But I still don’t know how many Asian pears 220ml is, or when exactly to eat them. I decide to munch one down an hour before drinking, then have another for luck just before my first sip of wine.
The results: OK, so everyone knows hangovers can be fluky. Like the time you did shots, mixed liquors, lost your wallet, drunk Tweeted and still woke up feeling fresh. Then, another time, you drank one wine and felt vile. Here, post-pears and post-much, much wine, I felt absolutely, completely, 100%... fine.
Verdict: Excuse me while I rush off to trademark my new Asian pear juice business! Of course, being hangover-free might have been due to my new fruity friends or any number of other factors – I mean, I’ve been known to blame a lot of stuff on the moon. But for £1.28, I’m stocking up. If I can find them again.
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