Imagine the scene. A disheveled man staggers through the Forum, a wine-stained toga casually tied around his torso. At his feet, empty amphora litter the floor, their contents being greedily consumed by the participants of the convivium. Saturnalia is growing wild this year, but with the December festivities coming to an end, it’s time to lay down with a cabbage on your head.
Fast forward thousands of years, and while we still party in the dark of winter, the green hangover pill now often comes in the form of a smoothie. Personally, I haven’t had much relief from my kale and ginger blend, so this year I thought I’d go old-fashioned and try some of the ancient world’s great remedies for alcoholism. Masu.
Dog hair?
It’s a little surprising that, with all the achievements of modern science, we still don’t really understand why drinking too much causes a hangover. And if we can’t figure out what’s causing it, it’s going to be much harder to cure it.
That said, at least we’ve made some progress since the ancient Greeks and Romans, who believed that the after-effects of a night of eating sauce were due to an imbalance of body fluids or an excess of blood. . Over the past 15 years, an international team of scientists collectively Alcohol hangover research group has been dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the terrifying Katzenjammer and has shed much-needed light on the physiological mechanisms involved.
Some of the group’s collaborators include Dr. Andrew Scholey From Swinburne University. An adjunct professor of human psychopharmacology explained this to IFLScience: So, it is usually during a hangover that a person realizes that they have removed alcohol from their body. ”
The materials and methods section for my first experiment lists mulled wine as the main ingredient and instructs me to drink it like a royal guest in an imperial hospitality box at the Colosseum.
Paradoxically, once the booze is completely gone from our bodies, we seem to start hanging. That’s when we think we’ll start to get back to normal. So, logically, if you keep drinking, your hangover should go away.
But Scholey says this “hair of the dog” approach has been studied and found that “all it does is delay the pain a little bit more.” In other words, simply drinking more alcohol is not an effective hangover treatment. That means you can cross it off your list before you start experimenting.
bottom up
For this research, I tried to recreate the ancient effects of alcohol as much as possible. For example, Romans typically drank wine or mead diluted with water and flavored with spices such as pepper and cinnamon. So the materials and methods section for my first experiment lists mulled wine as the main ingredient and instructs me to drink it like a royal guest in an imperial hospitality box at the Colosseum.
I also wore a makeshift toga made from bed sheets.
Like any well-prepared Greco-Roman booze hound, I made sure to put some cabbage on my pillow before passing out (much to the chagrin of my 21st century wife).
Now, about that cabbage. Supposedly, both the Greeks and Romans believed that cabbage and vines were natural enemies, and therefore sought help from leafy vegetables when suffering from the effects of the previous night’s revelry. The origin of this idea is difficult to pinpoint, and techniques for manipulating cabbage appear to have been diverse, with some people ingesting it raw or steamed, and others strapping it to their heads and applying it topically.
Coincidentally, cabbage is now known to contain high levels of vitamin C and vitamin K, and trials have shown that vitamin C and vitamin K may have health benefits. . protect the liver and kidneys From toxins. So, like any well-prepared Greco-Roman booze hound, I made sure to put some cabbage on my pillow before passing out (much to the chagrin of my 21st century wife).
But sadly, in the morning I developed a foul-smelling headache that I couldn’t get rid of even after eating a breakfast of steamed cabbage. It was clear that I was going to need something a little stronger to cure this hangover beast, so I turned to the 2,000-year-old Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, which recommends wearing the Alexandrian Laurel Wreath around your neck. followed the advice of the Egyptian scrolls.
This shrub, which is native to Asia and East Africa, is not very easy to come by here in London, but I managed to source some young plants from a nursery before I started my experiments. The leaves of this immature specimen were still small, so I decided to let the whole plant sit in my lap for a few hours while I was feeling miserable. But sadly this did nothing to ease my pain or self-loathing.
back to bottle
Unfortunately, there are very few extant documents documenting ancient hangover treatments, so it’s difficult to know exactly what types of antidotes were used in the past. However, one Babylonian text seems to list the following remedies: Licorice and oleanderamong other ingredients. However, given that the latter is highly toxic, we decided that sampling this particular concoction would probably be advisable, even with the most vicious hangover, so we did not participate in the experiment.
Meanwhile, the legendary Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder is said to have sworn by raw owl eggs and fried canaries. None of these treatments appear in his famous book. natural historyHowever, I gave myself permission to skip these options as well.
The only other ancient antidote for which physical evidence exists is amethyst. Amethyst actually comes from the Greek word amethyst, which means “not drunk.” Archaeologists also discovered ancient ring It is made of crystal like crystal and is thought to have been worn to protect people from hangovers and other unwanted side effects of drinking too much.
The next day was really bad and my mood certainly didn’t help seeing that stupid Amethyst sitting around the house like a bunch of glittering purple bastards.
Unsurprisingly, this stone is still being sold to over-the-top shoppers as a hangover cure, even though there’s absolutely no science to back this up. Rather than waste my money, I borrowed an amethyst crystal from my mom and prepared for a second bender (in the name of science) a few days after the first hangover subsided.
However, I couldn’t drink any more mulled wine, but this time I chose Scotch as my poison. Unfortunately for me, research shows that whiskey tends to lead to: terrible hangover More than other spirits like vodka, it’s probably because it’s aged in oak barrels that leach out a variety of compounds known as congeners, many of which are thought to contribute to the severity of hangovers.
Sure enough, the next day was really bad, and my mood certainly didn’t help seeing that stupid Amethyst sitting around the house like a bunch of shimmering purple bastards. I think maybe those congeners affected me (and oh, maybe alcohol didn’t help either).
A modern solution?
If there’s anything that hungover Roman cabbage huggers and my experiments have taught us, it’s that we shouldn’t believe the hype that claims to be a cure for excess. Still, that doesn’t stop us modern humans from trying to kick out the booze blues using all sorts of unscientific remedies.
Shorey, in collaboration with other researchers in the Alcohol Hangover Research Group, recently co-authored a study that investigated: 82 top products on Amazon It claims to reduce hangovers. Shockingly, he states that there was “absolutely no empirical evidence for any of it.” This shows that today’s drinkers are just as gullible as the drunkards of ancient times.
It’s unlikely that scientists will develop a reliable cure until they fully understand the causes of hangovers, but hope may be on the horizon, as some promising treatments have already been identified. For example, Scholey explains that “there are toxic metabolites that are produced during the removal of alcohol,” which likely contribute significantly to the development of unpleasant symptoms when coming out of an intoxication.
The most interesting of these is acetaldehyde. It is produced when the body processes ethanol and is much more toxic than alcohol itself. “With these toxins, you get a cytokine response, which is a type of inflammatory response that typically occurs when you encounter a virus or other foreign body,” Shorey says.
“And as you know, there’s new evidence that during the post-alcohol withdrawal phase, when you’re suffering from a hangover, the levels of these inflammatory markers increase.”Therefore, treatments that target inflammation are emerging. It seems plausible that it may play a role in hangover relief, but we’re still waiting for large-scale clinical trials to see if this is really the case.
Of course, studies also show that drinking water won’t alleviate a hangover, but it can reduce the symptoms of dehydration that typically accompany a morning headache.
For now, the long-standing search for a cure continues, but as Scholey points out, “there are all sorts of ethical questions about whether or not treating hangovers is desirable.” After all, while such treatments may have been developed with the goal of reducing alcohol-related harm, the reality is that people are less likely to use such products to drink more. There is.
And Zeus knows we do that more than enough as it is.
The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health care provider.
This article was first published in the December 29, 2024 issue of the digital magazine CURIOUS. Subscribe Never miss a problem.
