So you overdid it over the holidays. Not unusual. In fact, chances are you woke up with a nasty hangover more than once. There are a lot of supplements and “lab-made” remedies on the market these days that claim that a capsule or liquid shot, taken just before you go to bed, will stop you from feeling like crap. Well, that may be true. Still, some of these “miracle hangover cures” are more legit than others.
It helps to know just what makes a hangover. First, alcohol makes you dehydrated. Next, your liver can’t keep up with the toxins you pounded. And lastly, booze messes with the chemicals in your brain that regulate the sleep cycle. So, dehydration + toxins + lack of sleep = ouch.
Some products, like Thrive+ and Morning Recovery claim to address all three. How? Well, they contain electrolytes, which, along with water, may help to rehydrate and ease the headache. As for detoxification, milk thistle is a supposed remedy for liver disease. There’s not a ton of evidence, but vitamins B1 and B6 may help as well.
Where science springs ahead is around brain recovery. The sleep-wake cycle is controlled, in part, by two neurotransmitters. One is a stimulant, and the other a calmant. Alcohol creates an imbalance, making you tired when you drink and pepping you up when you stop—which happens to be when you crawl into bed, making for a restless night. To help with this, look for products containing taurine, an amino acid that may boost the neurotransmitter GABA (the calming chemical) to give you better sleep.
You need to know the science here is mostly hypothetical, because there haven’t been enough clinical trials to say that the supplements are why you’re waking up feeling fit as a fiddle and ready to go. Experts say there are too many variables to create a single universal cure for what’s ailing you. Sometimes we can drink all night and feel fine the next day, and others, it feels like someone’s beating on our skulls with a sledgehammer.
Diminishing hangover symptoms with supplements is probably the best we can hope for at the moment, but curing it across the board when there are so many subjective variables will be tricky. So for now, cover your bases by drinking a big glass of water, taking a supplement, an aspirin… and chowing ice cream and garlic fries before bed.
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