Does alcohol really help against a hangover?

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the foodies of online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our chefs serve you: does drinking alcohol help against a hangover.

From fried eggs with bacon to a liter of water before bed. After years of field research, I still can't figure out what the best remedy is for those (increasingly worse) king-sized hangovers. Yet one seems to prove itself time and again...

Throbbing head, trembling hands, turning over with a sigh and a groan only to turn back two seconds later because you feel nauseous from your new position. Hangovers. I've had them in all shapes and sizes.

In the fight against those hangovers, I've also tried various hangover remedies. Okay, suggestions like drinking pickle juice and rubbing lemon under my armpits I passed on, but running to ‘sweat it out’, cold showers, painkillers, and drinking water... all tried.

Recovery beer
And yet, nothing works quite as well as the recovery beer. Or wine. Or any other alcoholic treat. ‘Hair of the dog,’ the English call it. Many people complain about it, but it doesn't seem healthy to me. Is it a placebo? Or does it really work? I went on a quest.

And what turns out? Although most ‘evidence’ is anecdotal, there is indeed scientific evidence to be found that a drink can help you with your hangover symptoms the next morning. Yes, really.

How it works
It's a bit of a technical story, but here's the deal: alcohol contains a tiny bit of methanol – a very chemical substance. This is converted in your body into formaldehyde, a toxic substance that can make you feel so terrible the next day (the hangover symptoms).

But because your body only switches to metabolizing methanol once all the ethanol (alcohol) has been metabolized, drinking alcohol acts as a sort of distraction maneuver. The new drink provides new ethanol that the enzymes in your body react to, leaving the methanol alone and excreting it in urine without converting it into that formaldehyde.

What is best to drink?
Now, I certainly don't want to suggest anyone has an alcohol problem – because let's face it... if you're not careful, you'll just have the same problem the next day – but the ‘best’ drink to kill your hangover is vodka. Vodka contains relatively little methanol. Could that explain the popularity of the Bloody Mary at the boozy brunch on Sundays? Perhaps. Does that sound a bit too intense for you? A vodka-orange juice can also work, and you'll get some vitamins in.

Spoiler
By the way, a small note: the research that provides this scientific evidence is about people who more or less drank a bottle of spirits, then had a stomach pump, received activated charcoal treatment, were given fluids via IV, then had hemodialysis, and THEN they were injected with ethanol. So, well, whether you should really take this as an example... the best anti-hangover cure remains simply not drinking too much. Lame, but true. Well... cheers!