Hangover

Hangover

I'm what I call an antisocial drinker. I don't feel all that comfortable engaging in small talk, so I put a glass to my mouth, and occasionally I drink too much. I define "too much" as any amount that gives me the headache, stomach upset, thirst and general death-warmed-over feeling of a hangover. Conservatively, any more than two drinks a day is too much.

Maybe you've never had that kind of experience. But if you have, you may have occasion to use some natural hangover remedies.

Hangover is unfortunately quite common, because alcoholism is a major public health problem, affecting some ten million Americans. But you don't have to abuse alcohol to suffer an occasional hangover. You don't even have to get terribly drunk.

Why Hangovers Hurt So Much

Hangover is a mild version of alcohol withdrawal syndrome, which causes delirium tremens (DTs) in alcoholics. The headache is prompted in part by alcohol's relaxing effect on the blood vessels. As they open up, more blood flows through them, which causes the sensation of warmth we feel when drinking. But if the blood vessels of the head open too much, they trigger the pain nerves.

Alcohol is also a diuretic, so fluid loss contributes to morning-after thirst and can add to head pain.

The nausea and vomiting are a combination of alcohol's irritating effect on the stomach and its many effects on the central nervous system.

The fatigue and general lousy-all-over feeling result from alcohol's depressant effect and a buildup of acids in the blood (acidosis). The chemical acetaldehyde may also accumulate in the blood, leading to flushing.

Finally, additives and impurities in alcohol (congeners) contribute to hangovers. The general rule is that the darker the alcohol, the worse the hangover. Vodka and white wine contain few congeners, but bourbon, scotch and red wine are loaded with them.

Green Pharmacy for Hangover

I hate to state the obvious, but it needs to be said that a good basic approach to hangover is to prevent it by not drinking in the first place. Or you might try drinking clear liquor or white wine rather than the dark stuff. It also helps to drink lots of nonalcoholic beverages to stay well-hydrated and wash the acids out of your blood. All this helps head off both the headache and the upset stomach.

In addition, try these natural hangover aids.

Cinchona (Cinchona, various species.) The bitter bark that gives tonic water its flavor and is the source of quinine is used as a hangover remedy in China. Water in and of itself helps, but I suspect that bitter herbs like cinchona provide added benefit. Other bitter herbs often recommended for hangover include dandelion, gentian, mugwort and angostura, which is the same herb used in Angostura Bitters, a favorite hangover remedy among bartenders.

You can make an anti-hangover tea by adding a few drops of Angostura Bitters to a cup of boiling water. In fact, any of these herbs can be made into a very bitter tea. I'd suggest cutting the bitter flavor by adding the tasty herbs roselle and tamarind, both of which are also reputed to help banish hangover.

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba). Ginkgo seeds are not approved as food by the Food and Drug Administration, but they are available here. The Japanese have long served ginkgo seeds at cocktail parties, based on folklore assertions that they prevent drunkenness and hangover. Scientific studies out of Japan have shown that there is good reason to suspect that ginkgo seeds really can get the job done. It turns out that the seeds contain an enzyme that speeds up the body's metabolism of alcohol.

In one study, the researchers gave laboratory animals enough alcohol to get them very drunk. When the animals were given ginkgo seed extracts in advance, they were better able to clear alcohol from their blood. I'm not sure that ginkgo seeds have a similar effect in humans, but I suspect they do, which calls for a little poem: "They say that you won't get real stinko/If you nibble the nuts of the ginkgo."

Not great poetry, I admit, but it will help you remember what you need to cure the day-after blues.

Kudzu (Pueraria lobata). Some scientists finger a specific chemical (acetaldehyde) as the big culprit in hangover. Kudzu can cause acetaldehyde to accumulate in your blood faster, so you get your hangover--literally feeling headachy and nauseated--while you're drinking instead of the morning after. The trick is to take one or two capsules of dried kudzu with your first drink.

The advantage here, of course, is that as you start feeling lousy, you'll cut back on your drinking. Acetaldehyde accumulation makes drinking less pleasant and helps keep you from imbibing to excess. The Chinese use kudzu roots or flowers for this purpose.

You can also take kudzu as a tea the morning after, and experts say it can help provide some relief.

At this point, especially if you live in the South, you're probably wondering if I'm talking about that obnoxious vine that manages to drape itself over fields and forests for miles on end. Indeed I am. There is a valid use for this creeping green monster, after all!

Kudzu A notorious vine that sometimes completely smothers Southern pine trees, kudzu can be bought in medicinal capsules.

Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) and willow (Salix, various species). I wouldn't recommend taking aspirin for a hangover, as it might aggravate your upset stomach. But I've always found herbal forms of aspirin gentler on the stomach, which is why I can recommend the attractive, aromatic wintergreen. It's loaded with an aspirin relative, methyl-salicylate, so it could help clear up a hangover headache. (If you are allergic to aspirin, however, it might be a good idea to avoid aspirin-like herbs as well.)

If you like, you might mix wintergreen with willow bark, which also contains salicylates. Both are available all year long where I live, and as far north as Maine. (Of course, if you can't pick 'em fresh, you can always buy these herbs in dried form.)

Cherry birch bark can also be used as a source of salicylates. I'd make a cherry birch bark tea and add as much hot-pepper sauce as my taste buds can bear. Hot-pepper sauce contains capsaicin, a superb painkiller.

Or I'd try this aspirin-replacement herbal blend from Christopher Hobbs, distinguished fourth-generation California herbalist and botanist and author of Handbook for Herbal Healing: Two parts each of passionflower, white willow and wood betony and one part lavender. Hobbs suggests steeping two teaspoons of the mixture in one cup of boiling water.

Folk herbs. Many herbs have been used folklorically for hangover. They might help, or perhaps it's simply the water in the tea that makes people feel better. I have great respect for medical folklore, so I'll share the herbs with you: basil, black pepper, caraway, cinnamon, coriander, forsythia, ginger, gotu kola, honeysuckle, lavender, lemongrass, onion, pennyroyal, peppermint, plantain, poppy seeds, rosemary, rue, tea and yarrow. The mints contain potent antioxidants, substances that can help prevent some of the cellular-level damage that alcohol causes.

Guatemalans use juices or teas of red roselle, while Latin Americans generally recommend a beverage made of the pulp of tamarind. Both of these are favorites of mine. We could mix them together, sweeten them with high-fructose honey, and call it the Red Hangover Zapper.

My own favorite remedy is vegetable juice cocktail with a bit of hot-pepper sauce. All those veggies that are used to make the juice contain antioxidants, and of course, hot-pepper sauce contains the painkiller capsaicin. I also like onion soup, another folk remedy for hangover and a surprisingly good source of fructose.

Fructose. Fructose is fruit sugar. Korean scientists have suggested that fructose can speed up the body's metabolism of alcohol by about 25 percent.

Ginseng root is a favorite herb in Korea, and ginseng contains approximately 0.5 percent fructose. Perhaps that's why both Asian (Panax ginseng) and American (P. quinquefolius) ginseng have a long history of use for treating hangover. Personally, I rarely recommend ginseng because it costs so much.

Fortunately, there are cheaper and much better sources of fructose. Try putting some honey in your morning tea; it's more than 40 percent fructose. Maybe that's why one old-time hangover remedy among bartenders is simply honey in hot water.

Not far behind honey are dates, with 30 percent fructose. If you don't want tea in the morning, see if you can force down a couple of dates.