a few of my friends swear that eating greasy food (like burgers, long john silvers, or anything emerging from a frydaddy) the day after drinking eases hangover symptoms. their thoeries range from the grease somehow counteracting the alcohol in one’s system to to the grease causing the body to release anti-toxins that also help with hangover.
i say these are as logical as the grease feeding a small gnome that lives in the stomach, and, since a full (and greasy?) gnome is a happy gnome, one feels better soon thereafter.
anyway, weird or not, grease-eating seems to do the trick. so, does a cholesterol feast help, or is it just the power of suggestion?
I asked a question along these lines some time ago. One of the more interesting replies was the suggestion to drink Pedealyte (sp?) after the fact. According to the poster, it works like a charm.
Avocado,
the cause of hangover thought to be impurities and additives, or sone constituents of wine/booze. Some think that hangover’s main effect is caused by late effects of the ethanol itself. So, no certain cause and no definite treatment. I doubt there are any “antitoxins” released.
Kinoon’s approach make sense because it leads to hemodilution, i.e., it’s like saying: “I do not know what the toxins are, I just will lower their concentation and increase the volume of fluid passing through the kidneys, so the stuff will leave my old bod”. On top of that (possible “toxins”), there are physiologic effects, like constriction of some blood vessels. So, alcoholics fight it physiologically, too: they consume more vessel-dilating ethanol (constriction is the later stage, first comes dilatation).
They younger you are, the less you probably will be affected by a hangover. As you age, if you continue to party hardy on week ends, those hangovers will become earth shattering!
I’ve heard the food thing also, but when I’m hung over, greasy anything is the last thing I want to face. I don’t even want to face people until I feel better!
Hangovers are caused by several factors:
Stupidity of guzzling so much.
dehydration
swelling/edima of the brain
loss of electrolytes from your system
Irritation of the stomach and intestinal lining. (Alcohol is, after all, an organic poison.)
Cure:
When you stop guzzling for the night, take 2 500 mgm asprine – nothing with Tylenol in it and no alieve. You can take ibuprofen Knock back 1 or 2 150 mgm multible B tablets and drink a full glass of water.
When you get up, repeat the B and aspirin, guzzle a couple of glasses of pedialyte (it’s an isolyte solution designed for kids). You can mix it with and guzzle down Gatorade, but Gatorade usually has a high belt of ascorbic acid in it (Vit-C) which can irritate your sensitive stomach. If still thirsty, pound down several glasses of water. If you are trembling and shaking still, after 30 minutes or so, and getting odd heart beats, down a couple of potassium pills because you probably pissed most of it out of your system during your binge.
Shaking, trembling, the feeling they you are vibrating internally and an irregular heart beat usually means you’ve flushed out too much potassium. Alcohol does that. Pills are the quickest way to replace it because bananas, high in potassium, actually can give you heartburn if your stomach is irritated.
During the day, continue to drink fluids to hydrate you until you feel better.
We all seem to be ignoring the OP here. Why does eating a greasy meal help hangovers?
My answer? I don’t know, but it works for me. Not for standard hangovers though. The few times I’ve been really rat-faced and suffered from mild alcoholic poisoning I’ve been sick as a dog. If I don’t eat at all or only eat starchy food I’ll feel queasy the whole next day. As soon as I eat greasy food I feel fine (well better). I don’t know why it works. My theory: The body has an in-built mechanism to stop you eating after food poisoning so the digestive tract has time to flush the bugs without feeding them (the reason doctors put people with intestinal complaints on ‘clear liquid’ diets. This is the queasy feeling. The body assumes alcoholic poisoning is caused by bacteria and activates the system. As soon as you eat and don’t throw it back up the body assumes you’re well again and deactivates the system. Just my pet theory.
Of course it’s just as likely that I’ve pissed out the electrolytes in my body and run down my vitamin B reserves, and a big meal of salty hamburger with animal fat works when a slice of bread doesn’t for those reasons, but I think my original sounded better and I’ve never let the facts get in the way of a good story
Peace
You forget to mention that the leading cause of the symptoms of a hangover is simple dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic (it causes you to piss buckets). So wouldn’t the main gain from drinking Ringers be just from simple rehydration and replenishment of glycogen reserves rather than primarily from haemodilution?
The other factors would help naturally.
It doesn’t seem to say anything specific about greasy food, but it does mention that the amino acid cysteine can help fight a hangover. (It’s the main constituent of glutathione, which apparently is necessary for your body to break down alcohol.) While eggs are probably the best natural source, any high protein food like a big fat burger will provide you with cysteine.
Generally I find greasy food makes me feel better even when I don’t have a hangover!
I admit to partaking in the act of “consuming too many malt beverages” on a number of occasions. Here’s what works for me:
Before going to bed, take one or two aspirins. Then (and this is the most important part) drink as much water as you can. I mean, literally stand at the kitchen sink and keep drinking water until you can’t swallow another drop. Then fill a quart bottle of water and keep beside your bed; if you get thirsty in the middle of the night, take a few chugs of water.
You are right, Gaspode, I did not mention dehydration by name, but dehydration is part of the same problem: introduction of more liquid to lower “poison” concentration (rehydration) combats dehydration.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that aspirin and alcohol (ethanol) “do not mix”. Or was it alcohol and ibuprofen? The rest of the advice does make sense, except that it implies that one realizes that he is drunk. The latter is not usually the case: if you know that you are drunk, probably, you are not drunk enough.
Finally, I remember that the enzyme called “alcohol dehydrogenase” destroys alcohol in the body. The enzyme is low or not present at all in some individuals, genetically. So, consuming anything will not increase its levels. If it’s present, it is present in adequate qmounts. Alcohol itself is the most powerful inducer of this enzyme. As well as a few common drugs, such as barbiturates.
As far as I can remember, cysteine (and choline) are needed for normal liver function, in the long run. I’m not sure that their increased consumption immediately preceding a binge will help. On the other hand, I remember some restaurant ppomoting its egg-containing cocktails “becuse there is no hangover after them”.
Finally, ethanol does not decrease glycogen stores; it may increase them, if anything. Ringer’s lactate does not contain glycogen.
I found a website (have forgotten the address) that listed several hangover remedies - they claimed that hangovers were caused by a combo of dehydration (mostly), impurities in the booze and vitamin deficiency.
I wrote down the list of how much of each vitamin you should take before you go out, based on how much your body uses up during and after the pub crawl:
I haven’t tested this yet. My main remedy is to drink lots of water while out and before I go to bed, and stick to juice-based drinks - who knew a bloody mary was health food!
Aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (like ibuprofen) damage the stomach lining. Alcohol damages the stomach lining. Taking one on top of the other causes more damage to the stomach lining. I once ended up chucking up blood after I took aspirin for a hangover. Never again.
Count me in among the grease crowd. Back in college when I would occasionally drink to the point of stupidity the only thing I felt like eating the next morning were the dining hall sausages. A more pure representation of the grease ideal can not be found. Somehow they worked. Technically I’m not sure they helped the hangover (only time and lots o’ water does that), but they were the one thing I could keep down.
Ha! Yea, you would think so, but I haven’t found that to be the case for some reason. I don’t know why; perhaps it’s because your body is absorbing the water as fast as the alcohol is dehydrating you. All I know is that it works.
In addition to dehydration, hangovers are caused by the fact that there is no regulation for alcohol metabolism in the liver. The liver will breakdown just alcohol as fast as it can, and the levels of NADH rise to very high levels. High NADH levels are inhibitory of the gluconeogensis pathway (making glucose from proteins, lactic acid, etc.) Hence when you wake up in the morning you have very low blood glucose. Normally, when you wake up, if you haven’t been drinking, gluconeogeneis keeps your blood glucose levels normal until you can eat something. This could be why Pedialyte and gatorade help, they have lots of carbohydrates (glucose) Fatty foods helping is puzzling because fats have to have glucose to be metabolized. I would think that the carbos eaten with the fatty foods is what really helps and not the fat (the burger bun, or the potato in the fries).
While reading USCDiver’s post I thought of this: the low blood level of glucose in the morning could be easily corrected by ready available carbohydrates in beverages (Pedialyte, etc.). Fats are easily broken into glucose as well, that could be the reason that fatty foods (as well as carbohydrates) are so fattening. Just a guess.