Hangover relief: ginseng, cysteine and water versus the olive oil myth

Ginseng, cysteine and water: the home manual against hangovers that won't prevent cirrhosis

Hangovers are fought with water, not miracles. That is the conclusion of an alcohol harm-reduction manual circulating among social drinkers: alcohol is a toxin that the liver processes, producing acetaldehyde, a substance that damages liver cells, and no pill avoids that toll. What you can do is dilute the blow. The more hydrated the body is, the more diluted the alcohol and the milder its effects.

The original text, popular-science in tone with a whiff of the herbalist's shop, recommends Korean ginseng at 100 mg twice a day, vitamin C at 1,000 mg three times a day and L-cysteine at 1,000 mg in a single dose to lower blood alcohol levels. It adds ginger for nausea and warns of two strict prohibitions: no aspirin while there is alcohol in the blood, and never paracetamol, which heightens liver toxicity.

The myth of olive oil before a night out

Fat slows the absorption of alcohol in the stomach. Hence the habit of drinking milk or olive oil before a party, a practice the text itself describes as widespread. Gastric metabolism, moreover, is lower in women than in men, so the same amount drunk hits women harder. The basic science is simple: the stomach delays, the liver collects.

The problem comes when the liver becomes saturated. Then the damage spreads to the brain. And alcohol, the text reminds us, is energy without nutrients: empty calories that provide nothing. Drinking plenty of water during and afterwards is the most cited preventive measure against the dreaded hangover.

Age spares no one: from eight drinks to one beer

The passage of time is the best deterrent. Whoever at 23 downed eight drinks and played a match the next day is, at 34, unfit to drive after three beers. The experience repeats itself in several accounts: at 20, five or six stiff drinks and the next day nothing; at 39, a couple of mid-strength drinks at midday and the whole afternoon feeling awful.

The trick the veterans share is no supplement: start on a full stomach, alternate water between drinks and drink less. A bottle of water after each drink, some sum up, works wonders. Others point to timing: drinking during the day, getting drunk between 12 and 7 p.m. and going to bed at 10 p.m. halves the hangover.

Milk thistle, the fashionable liver protector

Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) has become fashionable as a liver protector before drinking. Its advocates credit it with a slight effect against headaches and some ability to mask the hangover. Vitamin B12 and methylfolate also come up, with the argument that alcohol reduces folate levels in the gut.

The sceptical camp isn't buying it. Fighting one drug with another and then another to offset the second is the verdict of those who see all this as a chemical band-aid. Alcohol brings the body nothing good, they stress, and the best way to reduce harm is not to drink. One pharmacist sums it up wryly: the flood of people asking for something to metabolise alcohol comes after a whole year of drinking.

The culture that normalises poison

Alcohol is the most addictive drug of all and yet the most socially tolerated. The teetotaller is looked upon as a freak. In TV series and films, when a protagonist has a problem, the first thing they do is open the bottle. There are many hidden functional alcoholics, and the media downplay the risks under pressure from the hospitality and tourism lobbies.

The hangover has its own pavor stories too: the person who spent hours hugging the toilet after eight rum-and-cokes, the one who vomited before sleeping and the next day couldn't even eat. And a warning hangs over it all: repeated alcohol poisoning leaves cognitive damage. What you're born with is what you die with.

Do you really need a cocktail of supplements for the body to forgive a night of excess, or is drinking less enough?