This article explains the different ways to cure a hangover in a drinking culture and the science behind them. To reduce the health effects of drinking and avoid disrupting your daily routine, it’s important to utilize hangover remedies such as bean sprout soup, which is rich in asparaginic acid to help break down acetaldehyde, honey water to energize the liver, hogwash drinks from traditional medicines, and chocolate milk as a quick source of energy. Furthermore, we suggest ways to practice healthy drinking culture while using alcohol to bond among people.
With back-to-school and admissions season upon us, college campuses are full of drinking. Departmental meetings, clubs, and social gatherings among classmates naturally lead to frequent drinking. In particular, freshmen and newcomers to the social scene often turn to alcohol to socialize with their peers, which is traditionally part of the culture of building relationships and leading the atmosphere. Alcohol has also become an integral part of the office workplace, and it’s an essential part of meeting up with old friends. As evidenced by the use of alcohol in rituals and the Three Kingdoms’ Taoist rituals, alcohol has become more than just an intoxicating beverage, but an important means of communication in our lives.
However, this culture does not always have positive consequences. For many people, drinking too much alcohol will interfere with their classes or work the next day, so they have to deal with hangovers. It”s important to understand the effects of alcohol on the body and how to deal with them. In this article, we”ll explain how ethanol enters the body and is broken down, as well as the basic principles of hangover cures.
First, let’s take a look at hangovers and how alcohol is broken down in the body. A hangover is a state of malaise, headache, and physical and mental fatigue that occurs when you wake up after drinking alcohol and lasts for one to two days. When alcohol enters the body, it is absorbed primarily in the stomach and small intestine and travels through the bloodstream to the liver, which is responsible for about 90% of alcohol breakdown. Here, alcohol is oxidized to acetaldehyde by an enzyme called ADH (Alcohol Dehydrogenase), which is the main cause of the hangover you feel. Acetaldehyde is toxic in the body and causes a variety of bodily reactions, including vomiting, headaches, and difficulty breathing. The liver breaks it down into acetic acid using another enzyme, aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), and finally converts it into water and carbon dioxide, which is then flushed out of the body. When this process runs smoothly, hangover symptoms are reduced.
Therefore, to get rid of a hangover quickly, you need to increase the activity of ADH and ALDH enzymes and provide the liver with the energy it needs to break down alcohol. Based on this principle, traditional hangover remedies and more recently developed methods are widely used.
Traditional hangover remedies include bean sprout soup and honey water. Asparaginic acid, an amino acid found in bean sprout soup, is a hangover cure that helps the enzymes ADH and ALDH to break down ethanol and acetaldehyde quickly. Next, honey water is a quick source of energy, consisting of the simple sugars glucose and fructose, which provide quick energy to the liver. If you think of the liver as a factory, the asparaginic acid in bean sprout soup is the lubricant that keeps the machinery running smoothly, and the honey water is the fuel that powers it.
More modern hangover cures, such as hangover drinks, haze drinks, and chocolate milk, are also gaining traction. The most popular hangover drinks are made from the berries and woody parts of the birch tree, which contain active substances called ampelopsin and hovenitins, which protect the liver and accelerate the breakdown of alcohol. It’s a hangover cure that combines the old and the new, as it was used as a traditional medicine before it was commercialized as a beverage. Chocolate milk is a combination of carbohydrates from chocolate and alkaline milk: the carbohydrates provide the liver with quick energy to help fight off a hangover, while the alkaline content of the milk neutralizes the acidic acetic acid to reduce the burden on the body.
The common thread in all of these hangover remedies is that they all focus on breaking down acetaldehyde and getting it out of the body. To do this, it’s important to control the amount of alcohol you drink and avoid drinking too much. Just as the phrase “it’s been a while, let’s have a meal sometime” means more than just a meal, the phrase “let’s have a drink” means more than just a drink. Alcohol is not just an intoxicating beverage, it has a social role that connects people and creates bonds between people. Therefore, it is important to know the principles and methods of hangover cures in order to avoid overdrinking and maintain a healthy drinking culture.
