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Hangover Helper—Herbal Remedies for the Overindulgent Holiday Maker
Plants & Gardens News | Volume 19, Number 3 | Fall 2004/Winter 2005
by Ilene Sternberg
Illustration by Peggy Fussell.
Once again, the holiday season approaches. And once again, dark armies of honey-baked ham, roast turkey, spiced pie, mulled wine, and fancy liquor gather on the horizon to launch an assault upon "innocent" merrymakers everywhere. No doubt millions of us will consume a few too many alcoholic beverages at some point during the festivities and wake up with throbbing heads, dry mouths, sore bellies, and halfhearted resolutions to never touch another drop ever again.
But what can you do when you wake up in such a state? Is there really such a thing as an effective hangover cure? Slabs of cold pizza? Buckets of hot coffee? Boiled tripe? Bananas? A strong Bloody Mary?
The medical consensus seems to be no. There are certain preventive measures you can take—most notably drinking a lot of water before calling it a night—which will help reduce the severity of an impending hangover. (Researchers at Tulane University, in New Orleans, have just released a study claiming that an extract of prickly pear cactus, taken five hours before drinking, diminishes the nastier aftereffects.) But most "cures" simply aim to ease one or more hangover symptoms. A hangover technically won't end until all the alcohol has been metabolized and is out of your system.
Of course, you needn't sit and suffer while your liver and other organs get the job done. Hangover helpers abound. And if you like to grow herbs, you may already have many garden-variety antidotes close at hand. Herbal hangover remedies go back a long way—perhaps even as far as the Neanderthals (60,000 years), who appear to have collected medicinal plants and may also have discovered the distinctive pleasures of an occasional draft of fermented berry juice.
Anatomy of a Hangover
Why do hangovers occur when we drink alcohol to the point of intoxication? There's still debate over the exact physiological mechanisms, but several factors seem to be involved. Alcohol is a diuretic, so a hangover is partly due to dehydration and the body's loss of essential salts like potassium and magnesium. Alcohol also directly interferes with blood-sugar levels and disrupts endocrine and immune-system function. Some scientists identify acetaldehyde, a toxic metabolite of alcohol (and also a carcinogen found in cigarette smoke, car exhaust, and embalming fluid), as the chemical culprit in hangovers.
Fatigue results from alcohol's depressant effect and acidosis, a buildup of acids in the blood. Alcohol increases blood flow to the stomach, precipitating acid secretions that may lead to an upset tummy. Acetaldehyde may also lead to flushing—and a strong desire to flush oneself down the drain.
The type of alcohol consumed matters too. Darker, sweeter libations contain more congeners—chemical byproducts of the fermentation process—additives, or impurities. So, brandy, sherry, bourbon, scotch, red wine and whiskey, as well as cheap, poorly refined spirits, are likely to trigger a worse reaction than fine white wine or a premium vodka.
Mixing an assortment of alcoholic beverages and drinking on an empty stomach will exacerbate the aftereffects (food slows down alcohol's absorption into the bloodstream). Lack of sleep also increases hangover susceptibility, and smoking provides additional toxins and promotes dehydration.
Taking the Herbal "Cure"
When you have a hangover, there is a standard procedure to follow. Ingest copious amounts of water, take some vitamin C, eat a light meal to stabilize blood sugar (if you can stomach it), and get some sleep. Pain relievers should be used with caution. Some may further irritate the stomach, and alcohol may amplify the toxic effects of acetaminophen on the liver.
As for plant-derived panaceas, some folks soothe a hangover with apples, lemon juice in water, ginger, pineapple, or fennel. Bitter herbs prescribed include dandelion, gentian, mugwort, and angostura—the same herb used in angostura bitters, a favorite hangover helper among bartenders.
California herbalist Christopher Hobbs, author of Handbook for Herbal Healing (Botanica Press, 1997), suggests mixing two parts each of passionflower, white willow, and wood betony to one part lavender, then steeping two teaspoons of the mixture in one cup of boiling water. (I assume he means for the concoction to be swallowed, as it seems unlikely that just brewing up the stuff will take one's mind off the wretched discomfort.)
Many folk remedies include basil, black pepper, caraway, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, forsythia, ginger, gotu kola (Centella asiatica), honeysuckle, lavender, lemongrass, milk thistle, onion, pennyroyal, peppermint, plantain, poppy seeds, rosemary, rue, tea, wintergreen, and yarrow. Mints contain antioxidants that supposedly impede some of the cellular damage alcohol causes. Of course, hot-pepper sauce and onions also contain antioxidants; they're tough to down, however, when you're kneeling before the porcelain altar.
Hangover antidotes are, of course, a worldwide phenomenon. Guatemalans use juice or tea of red roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa), while other Latin Americans generally recommend a beverage made of tamarind pulp. Korean scientists claim that fructose (fruit sugar) can speed up the body's metabolism of alcohol by 25 percent, and they advocate ginseng root as a high-fructose herbal remedy. Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) seeds contain an enzyme that speeds up alcohol metabolism and have long been served at Japanese cocktail parties to prevent inebriation and its consequences.
Kudzu to the Rescue?
The most interesting and ubiquitous herbal remedy by far is kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata). Imported to the U.S. around the turn of the century as an ornamental vine, erosion-control agent, and livestock food supplement, kudzu quickly became an invasive menace and is now considered "the vine that ate the South." People in North Carolina, Georgia, and other states below the Mason-Dixon Line can confirm that this twining tyrant grows as much as a foot a day in summer and can climb a pole or cover a house before you can say, "Kudzu please pass the pruning shears."
However, the Chinese have been using kudzu's starchy root tubers to treat headaches, hangovers, and alcohol dependency for at least 1,300 years. The tubers contain a chemical compound, daidzin, which has proved successful in suppressing both alcohol cravings and liquor's intoxicating payoff upon entering the bloodstream.
Sold as a root or extract, kudzu is included in a morning-after tea called xing-jiu-ling, which essentially means "sober up." Kudzu's appeal is in its low toxicity levels and lack of side effects. In Japan, some prepared tea mixes sold in markets contain equal parts kudzu root, umeboshi (pickled plums), and ginger root, which has an antispasmodic effect on stomach muscles.
One theory contends that kudzu causes acetaldehyde to accumulate more rapidly in the blood, so that hangover symptoms occur during drinking instead of the next day. Taking one or two capsules of dried kudzu root or flowers with the first swig makes drinking less pleasurable and helps discourage a person from imbibing to excess. (Nothing beats getting sick early in the game.)
Good news for us and great news for alcoholic hamsters: Harvard scientists, recognizing China's success with kudzu, observed that hamsters, happily consuming the human equivalent of a case of wine a day, rapidly lost their appetite for booze when treated with kudzu extracts and voluntarily cut their intake by half. The active ingredients in kudzu, once isolated, also outperformed the drugs prescribed to treat alcoholism in American patients.
More Plant-Derived Panaceas
There are dozens of herbal hangover tonics available in health-food stores and on the Web. One, aptly called Rebound, contains succinic acid (a key component of amber, which was used as far back as 1280 for stomach and rheumatic aches), fumaric acid (a common food additive), young barley grass juice powder (mmm-mmm!), dextrose, vitamin C, a few B vitamins, and other additives. The manufacturer claims that the stuff regulates the accumulation of acetaldehyde by slowing down alcohol absorption and speeding up the liver's enzymatic conversion of acetaldehyde into a nontoxic acid.
The latest in hangover preparations to hit the market here and in the British Isles is RU-21. It has ingredients similar to those of Rebound and is touted to be a formula used by KGB agents to ply their targets with alcohol without suffering the aftereffects of drinking themselves.
Herbal treatments are generally not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but ask your doctor if it's okay to raid the spice shelf or herb rack. And get his or her permission before dragging yourself out on the lawn to gnaw the dandelions, chomp on the forsythia hedge, crawl around in the herb garden, or chew the honeysuckle and kudzu for relief. Or perhaps just consider resolving once again never to behave like a Neanderthal on New Year's Eve.
Ilene Sternberg is an award-winning garden writer and the author of Best Garden Plants of Pennsylvania (Lone Pine Publishing).