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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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Noah Berger / AP file

All those holiday shoppers...and all that holiday music. Can your brain handle it?

Shana McGough likes Christmas music, until she hears too much of it.

"I think at first Christmas music is nice, it's nostalgic, and it gets me into the holiday spirit," says the writer from Escondido, Calif. Then, "it gets old, and it can start to feel like a part of a giant sales machine trying to bleed me dry."

She also suspects that for anyone of a different faith who doesn't celebrate Christmas,"holiday music must be beyond annoying, right into offensive."

If it’s not started already, by the time the Thanksgiving meal is devoured and the stores open for Black Friday, Christmas music will be inescapable. After hearing 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' and 'Frosty the Snowman' for the umpteenth time, you might be hoping for a silent night.

Earlier this month Canada's top pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart Corp. heeded shopper complaints and put the holiday music on pause until later in the season. Even for people who celebrate Christmas, listening to the same seemingly inescapable seasonal songs over and over again may be incredibly irritating.

Endless loops of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or any tinsel-y tune can have a psychological impact known as the 'mere exposure effect,' says Victoria Williamson, Ph.D, who conducts research on the psychology of music at Goldsmiths, University of London. There's a U-shaped relationship between the amount of times we hear music that we like and our subsequent reaction to it, she says.

As Williamson puts it, at first we like music a bit, then we like it more and more until it hits a peak. And then we crash down -- we have overheard it. That's when boredom and annoyance at the repetition of the same sound hits home. "Anyone who has worked in a Christmas store over the holidays will know what I'm talking about," Williamson says. When asked why holiday music seems to have a polarizing effect, driving some people crazy while others like, or at least, can tolerate it, Williamson suggests that music's effect on us in any situation depends on our own psychological state.

People who are already stressed out about the holidays -- worrying about money, traveling, or seeing relatives -- may find the musical reminder of the cause of their stress very unwelcome, she says. But those who approach the holidays in a receptive, relaxed state are more likely to get a boost from the happy associations -- childhood memories, family gatherings, or the holiday's religious meaning -- triggered by holiday music.

Of course, the reason Christmas music is played in every department store, supermarket from Thanksgiving through December. Music can put us in the mood to spend money, research suggests.

"We've shown that 'holiday appropriate' music combined with congruent 'holiday scents' can influence shoppers by increasing the amount of time they spend in a store, their intention to revisit it, and intention to purchase," says Eric Spangenberg, Ph.D, dean of the College of Business at Washington State University in Pullman, who has studied the  influence of music on holiday shopping.

He says that some types of music work better than others. "Slower tempo music slows down shoppers, and they spend more time and money in a store," Spangenberg explains. Faster-paced pieces move people through the store quicker than retailers would like.

For Charlie Muldoon, only certain types of holiday music can put him in a good mood.

"I find the traditional songs sung by the great artists of the 50s and 60s or the funny songs about 'Grandma Getting Run Over by a Reindeer' put a smile on my face," says the Washington, DC-based professional polo player. 

"But those remakes by commercial singers and rappers make me want to go postal," Muldoon confesses. And some sounds make him forget the season's peace on earth, goodwill toward men sentiment. "Those 'elevator' versions of holiday music make me want to take a bat to the machine that plays them," he says.

As long as Christmas songs are played after Thanksgiving, Mary Leach, a public relations professional who lives in Cambridge, Mass., doesn’t mind. To her, "Christmas [music and decorations] much prior to Turkey Day is just plain wrong."

More from The Body Odd: 

• See Jesus in toast? Science explains the mind trick
• Itching is contagious. I'm scratching already 
• Even your strangest dreams are rooted in reality

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