Happy New Year, morning cures

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January 1, 2006

Hangover Helpers: Beyond Sheep Eyes

By ALEX WILLIAMS

The last time Nan Anane, a graphic designer in San Francisco, had one beer

too many during a night out with friends, his first stop the next morning

was to his local Mexican taqueria, where he ordered tostadas made with

ceviche, uncooked fish cured with citrus juice. " It really brings me back

from that headache and bodyache, " he said. " Something about near-raw fish

really breathes life back into you. "

Outer Mongolians are said to have feasted on pickled sheep eyeballs in

tomato juice. Cattle ropers in the Old West supposedly sipped tea brewed

from rabbit dung. Russians have been known to drip vodka over fatty sausage

into a tumbler and then drink it. Long before the ancient Egyptians started

raising a beer in honor of the god Osiris, human beings have been in search

of hangover relief, and this morning, as people wake up groggy from yet

another New Year's Eve, there will be dozens of cures to choose from that go

far beyond the traditional Alka-Seltzer.

The Internet has made it possible for anyone to share secret cures,

including waffle sandwiches, Pedialyte Freezer Pops and coffee enemas. It

has also allowed small-time herbalists and vitamin distributors to market a

panoply of packaged remedies trumpeting ingredients like artichoke extract,

sarsaparilla root and prickly pear. There's even something called the Wasabi

Hangover Bath Treatment concocted from Epsom salts and organic mustard,

intended to help you sweat out the toxins.

Though there has been limited medical research into the effectiveness of

such cures, the explosion of new products prompted British and Dutch

researchers to review the research on popular folk remedies and hangover

products. The results, published in late December in BMJ, the British

medical journal, found that " no compelling evidence exists to suggest that

any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing

or treating alcohol hangover " (although the researchers noted " encouraging

findings " for borage, a yeast product, and tolfenamic acid, a painkiller).

Foggy heads, however, are ill equipped to process hard scientific data, and

most overindulgers faced with the nausea and wobbly knees that often follow

an epic bender will simply do what they and their forebears have always

done: cobble together a regimen of tried-and-perhaps-true home remedies,

usually heavy on fatty foods, salt and blind faith. No dubious news reports

will shake their devotion to the beloved and highly specific miracle cure of

their own design - say, pizza followed by a shot of the bitter spirit

Fernet-Branca, a ginger ale, a multivitamin and two Advils, the preferred

tonic of Idziorek, 33, a technical recruiter in San Francisco.

" I think eating anything that will absorb the alcohol is a good choice, " she

explained. " But I just can't seem to get my friends to eat some healthy

whole wheat toast when we're all really drunk. "

Rich, the editor of Modern Drunkard, a monthly humor magazine in

Denver, said that during his years as an Army Ranger in the early 1980's he

used to hit up the medics for intravenous saline drips, which, he maintains,

brought an instant revival of energy. Since then, he said, he has turned to

Propel Fitness Water, explaining, " It has lots of B vitamins and goes down

easier than water. "

Some hangover remedies involve multiple and specific steps. Casey Cunniffe,

35, a production manager at Time Warner Inc., who lives in Norwalk, Conn.,

usually ends a night of indulgence with a fried egg sandwich, then wakes up

to a vanilla milkshake - and a glass of beer mixed with 7-Up for acute

cases, he said.

" The hair of the dog thing works, as long as you're not going anywhere, " Mr.

Cunniffe said. " The milkshake helps cool you down. "

Quaint tales about miracle cures available in the refrigerator have survived

into the age of nanotechnology in part because even physicians cannot agree

on what precisely causes a hangover, said Dr. D. Rosenberg, the

director of the headache clinic at s Hopkins University.

The symptoms are familiar enough: headache, nausea and grogginess. Most

authorities, he said, agree that they seem to be caused by a combination of

factors resulting from intoxication by alcohol, including dehydration,

dilation of blood vessels around the brain, changes in certain chemical

levels in the body and alteration of the sleep cycle.

But no one knows exactly how large a role each of those causes plays, which

means that no one knows exactly how to treat them, Dr. Rosenberg said.

Besides, he added, certain aspects of the art of hangover management

actually do have some basis in science. Salty food, for instance, is not a

bad idea, nor are sugary drinks. " You need water and salt to stay hydrated, "

he said. " But I wouldn't go drinking seawater. " The electrolytes - salts -

in sports drinks like Gatorade can be helpful, he said.

Other favored hangover balms, however, would seem worthless, he said. Eggs,

which many sufferers swear by, are high in protein and cholesterol, but

neither of those seems to have anything to do with hangovers. Spicy food

will do nothing more " than make your breath smell really interesting, " Dr.

Rosenberg added. As for the raw fish Mr. Anante relies on, it is of no

apparent value, " unless you're a really drunk polar bear. "

Hair of the dog, meanwhile, only prolongs dehydration and replenishes the

body with toxins. As for fatty foods, they're " a mistake, because the liver

can't process all of these things at once, " said Dr. Marc K. Siegel, an

internist at New York University Medical School. " You're bombarding your

liver with a toxin, then bombarding it with fat. "

To him the best bet is a cup of coffee, a dash of Mylanta and a lot of

water. " It's not sexy, " Dr. Siegel said. " But those things work. "

As for the number of new hangover products on the market, many are made by

small companies and marketed primarily through the Internet, said Mark

Blumenthal, the executive director of the American Botanical Council, a

nonprofit organization in Austin, Tex., devoted to education on herbal

medicines. According to the British study, many of those herbal remedies

have not undergone rigorous medical testing.

Mike Pearson, a programmer for an aerospace firm in Los Angeles, took

matters into his own hands in 2003 with a Web site called

www.hangoverreview.com. On the site he and his friends started trying out

the handful of commercial remedies then available. Since then, Mr. Pearson

said, so many new hangover remedies have entered the market that he has a

hard time keeping up.

" Since the hangover cure market popped, " he wrote in an e-mail message,

" almost all vitamin manufacturers have added some kind of hangover cure to

their list. " He said many cures could have some value simply because " the

basic principle of providing more of the vitamins your body needs to process

alcohol is probably going to help to some degree. "

While doctors uniformly agree that the only real cure for a hangover is

abstaining from alcohol altogether, some concede that the best folk remedies

for those who succumb to temptation may be any of them, that is, whatever

the individual thinks will work.

L. Burlingame, a retired publishing executive who lives in

Westchester County, said he has relied on the same morning-after remedy - a

dire brew of beef consommé, Worcestershire sauce and vodka known as a bull

shot - for years but allows that faith might be its most potent ingredient.

" There's the truth, and there's the larger truth, " he said. " The truth is it

probably doesn't work. The larger truth is that if you think it does, it

makes all the difference. "

Or, in Dr. Rosenberg's words, " If someone thinks something is going to work,

they're usually going to get better. "

There is another school of thought, however. As Israel, the

general manager of the Ginger Man, a bar on East 36th Street, said, perhaps

the best way to deal with a hangover is the most time-honored way, prolonged

suffering.

" I wallow in my hangovers, " Mr. Israel explained. " If you don't hangover,

you didn't have a good time. "

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company