Everyone seems to have a go-to hangover remedy. Some people swear a Prairie Oyster—raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, and a splash of hot sauce—makes the nausea and headache subside (or maybe the beverage is so disgusting people forget they’re hung over?). Others believe a greasy breakfast makes them feel OK again. Still some crack open a beer, believing that only the hair of the dog can help them. But are all these efforts useless? Is it even possible to get rid of a hangover?  

The only sure way to avoid a hangover is, of course, to abstain from drinking. But there are at least some science-backed ways to make the symptoms more bearable, says Alyson Mitchell, a professor and John Kinsella Chair in the department of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis. 

Every year U.S. companies lose an estimated $148 billion on hangovers, says Alyson Mitchell, but experts know little about them. Hangovers cost so much because so many people miss work and if they do show, they flub basic tasks because being hung over makes people a bit, well, stupid. That's just one example of why we need more research on hangovers, Mitchell argued during a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting. 

“The interesting thing about a hangover is that really it is a metabolic storm that is going on,” says Mitchell, a professor and John Kinsella Chair in the department of food science and technology at University of California, Davis. Hangovers involve a variety of systems, causing headaches, stomach discomfort, and immune responses like out-of-control inflammation. 

Mitchell notes that there a wealth of research on alcohol and alcoholism, but there is little research on hangovers (PubMed has more than 700,000 articles on alcohol and only 400 on hangovers). While she believes researchers might shy away from studying hangovers because finding a hangover cure might encourage excessive drinking, she thinks that examining hangovers can improve our understanding of how the immune systems, metabolisms, GI systems react to alcohol. 

“We really don’t know much about a hangover and it is an incredibly puzzling response—the symptoms only show up after all the alcohol is metabolized and gone from the body. And that in itself is amazing,” says Mitchell.  “The fact that something is the most toxic after it has been eliminated from the body [is unusual].” 

On to the “cures”: One way to avoid hangover symptoms is to drink water while you’re drinking alcohol. Alcohol works as a diuretic causing that achy head (so does caffeine; consuming alcohol and an energy drink will double that hangover). 

“You lose a lot of liquid through urination—four times as much water is lost as you take in,” Mitchell explains. “Ethanol is also a vasodilator and that [also] causes some of the headache issues.”  

People can also treat that icky hangover feeling by drinking fruit juice, which helps us hydrate and replace carbohydrates lost from drinking.  It’s also why eating toast or crackers sometimes makes us feel better.

Prior to drinking, people should eat a high fat meal, something that includes olive oil, meat, or dairy. The fat coats the stomach, meaning it takes the body longer to absorb the alcohol. The day after drinking, eating eggs helps replace cysteine, an amino acid, lost from alcohol consumption. Our bodies don’t easily replenish the amino acid and cysteine-rich eggs help restore it.  

”Hangovers are so common and prevalent in every society,” she says. “[Yet] I found it to be almost shocking that there is so little real research done on hangovers.” 

Related:

Eat asparagus, and more questionable ways to ease your hangover

Why do hangovers seem so much worse as we get older?

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After all the champagne, beer, spirits or (and?) wine on New Year’s Eve, some of us will wake up with a persistent pounding in our heads, mouths as dry as deserts and overwhelming nausea -- all the telltale signs of a hangover.

What can make this terrible feeling go away? “The only thing that actually helps is not drinking,” says Dr. Glen Aukerman, medical director of the Ohio State University Center for Integrated Medicine, using logic to wreck everyone’s festive mood. He notes that taking calcium, magnesium and a complete B supplement and drinking lots of water helps with hangover symptoms.

While the experts agree -- and, really, most of us know -- that abstaining from alcohol or drinking less is the only surefire way to prevent a hangover, if you must imbibe tonight, here are a few foods people often use to lessen the pains the day after drinking. 

Pass the asparagus: In 2009, researchers in South Korea published a paper saying that eating asparagus before drinking prevents those icky hangover feelings.

“There is a little tidbit of truth to it … not that I would discourage people from eating asparagus,” explains Leslie Bonci, director of sports nutrition at UPMC Center for Sports Medicine in Pittsburgh, adding that bingeing on asparagus the night before drinking will do nothing for a headache the next day.

But asparagus might protect the body from booze. The amino acids in asparagus improve how quickly human cells break down alcohol, preventing some long term damage from toxic byproducts of alcohol such as hydrogen peroxide.

“Whether other or not these effects will actually make a human feel any better remains to be seen,” writes Dr. Rachel Vreeman, co-author of “Don’t Swallow Your Gum! Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies about Your Body and Health,” in an email. “It is not clear that these amino acids, or amino acids from other good sources like eggs, will actually help a person with a hangover feel any better.”  

Guzzling pickle juice: Russians and Eastern Europeans swear that a swig of pickle juice makes them feel better after a night of heavy drinking. 

If people can get the pickle juice down, says Bonci, it acts like a sports drink, restoring the electrolytes that the dehydrating alcohol has depleted. Much of the pain of a hangover occurs because the body’s dehydrated of water and nutrients.  

“Of course, if you actually manage to get it down, you might think of yourself as being ‘cured’ of your hangover,” jokes Vreeman, also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine.

Aside from its taste, pickle juice has another disadvantage.

“Pickle juice, that’s got a lot of salt in it; I’d probably stay away from that,” says Dr. Daniel Hall Flavin, MD, an addiction psychiatry consultant at the Mayo Clinic. “If there is any benefit [it] is replacing the electrolytes.” 

The experts say that a sports drink such as Gatorade is a better panacea to dehydration (and tastes better).

Reach for the prickly pear: Before some people begin drinking, they turn to a houseplant. Well, not exactly. Some believe that the cactus, the prickly pear, will cure what ails them.

Prickly pear is chockfull of potassium, explains Bonci, and an extra boost of that nutrient might make a hangover sufferer feel more human. Prickly pear extract can be added to drinks. People can also purchase prickly pear jellies and candies as well as the pulp (it is easier to find it in say the Southwest, but co-ops and speciality stores carry the extract.) Specifically, people should eat the species Opuntia ficus-indica, which is used most often for foods. (While it might seem obvious, we'd like to remind you to remove the spines before eating prickly pear.)

“[A] study found that the prickly pear improved some individual symptoms,” says Vreeman. Taken before drinking, prickly pear lessens dry mouth and nausea. But Vreeman adds that in the randomized, controlled test, the group that received the prickly pear and the placebo group both scored their hangovers the same—people still feel yucky.

Prickly pear works because it helps regulate inflammation. Alcohol changes the amount of inflammatory chemicals, prostaglandins and cytokines, in the body and this imbalance might cause hangovers. Prickly pear controls these fluctuations and the body experiences less turmoil.  

“Whether that improves how humans actually feel remains to be seen,” says Vreeman.

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