After a drunken evening, how do you feel better the next day? 23 hangover cures have been tested by scientists. Results: they are not really effective.
- In France, more than 41,000 deaths are attributable to alcohol each year.
- The ideal is not to consume more than 2 glasses of alcohol per day, not to drink alcohol at least 2 days per week and not to exceed more than 10 glasses per week.
31% of French people exceed the alcohol consumption thresholds defined by Public Health France, according to a survey carried out by BVA for the League against cancer and published by the Sunday newspaper. The quantities recommended by the health authority are two glasses per day, not every day, and a maximum of ten glasses per week. People who exceed these thresholds expose themselves to various health problems because alcohol consumption is responsible for more than 200 diseases and other injuries according to Inserm. Some are directly attributable to alcohol, such as alcoholic cirrhosis, but for other pathologies, such as cancer or high blood pressure, alcohol consumption is a risk factor.
Hangover Remedies Often Ineffective
New Year’s Eve, Christmas, birthday… Some occasions are conducive to alcohol abuse. But when you consume too much, it is not uncommon to wake up the next day with unpleasant sensations, such as headaches, nausea or raspy tongue. In other words, with a hangover! To combat it, some opt for grandmother’s remedies, others for probiotic products or drugs. Among all these solutions, researchers wanted to analyze which are really effective. They chose 23 and tested them in the lab. Results: only 7 of them could work. According to the authors of this study published in the journal Addictiontheir virtues would be approximate, because there is no scientific proof proving their effectiveness.
Clove extract reduces hangover symptoms
Among the remedies studied, the scientists considered that the most effective were clove extract, tolfenamic acid, an anti-inflammatory, and pyritinol, a substance that brings together two molecules of vitamin B6. In detail, the British newspaper The Guardian noted that “Participants who took a clove extract tablet while drinking had, on average, a hangover symptom score of 19%, compared to 43% for those who took a placebo tablet.” On the other hand, the authors considered that there was no scientific evidence that aspirin or paracetamol improved the condition of people with hangovers because no studies have so far been conducted to investigate their effects. .
To reach their conclusions, the authors analyzed 21 previously conducted studies that investigated different hangover cures. Among them, none analyzed the effects of aspirin or paracetamol. All these works included few participants: less than 400 in all. The research on clove extract, for example, had only 16 participants, thus limiting the scope of the conclusions. The authors noted that there was “significant degrees of imprecision in outcome measures of treatment effect” in the studies they reviewed.
The best advice is to limit your alcohol consumption.
The authors indicated that more research should be conducted to estimate the true effects of these hangover products. Professor David Nutt, of Imperial College London, who was not involved in this study, told the Guardian that the only way to avoid a hangover was to drink less or consume non-alcoholic beverages. “Hangovers are probably the least researched health problem,” he says. “Yet it costs more than £10 billion [11,9 millions d’euros] per year to the UK economy.”
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