Each New Year's Day,
the plague descends: millions of people wake up with pounding
heads, fuzzy tongues and pitching stomachs. But while
remedies — ranging from the sensible to the peculiar
— abound, there's still no real cure for the common
hangover.
"The obvious answer is, if you
don't want to get hangovers, don't drink," advises Dr
Rob Fingerote, consultant in gastroenterology and hepatology
at York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill, ON. "Some
doctors even think we shouldn't treat hangovers, because
they encourage people to limit their alcohol consumption.
But that's sort of the same thing as saying, 'Let's
not treat lung cancer, because that would encourage
people to smoke,' which is absolutely absurd."
There's certainly a market for
a cure. Websites are proliferating to meet the demand,
touting 'revolutionary' pills with ingredients from
active carbon to white kidney bean extract. Are any
worth recommending to patients? "Few, if any, of the
cures advertised have been tested with double-blind
studies," Dr Fingerote observes. "Probably because it
wouldn't be very ethical getting people drunk and seeing
if they get a hangover to see if your medication works."
PROCEED
WITH CAUTION
But in the absence of scientific evidence, Dr Fingerote
urges you to urge caution in your suffering patients.
"You have to be careful to make sure the cure isn't
worse than the disease." See our chart for the lowdown.
In the absence of a safe, reliable
hangover cure, common sense has to suffice. "The key
thing is to maintain hydration," says Dr Fingerote,
and a full belly helps too. But if patients should happen
to overdo it, "for most people, a nice, quiet room,
a little Tylenol and lots of fluids" should do the trick.
Ultimately, the lack of a cure
may be because hangovers just aren't that serious an
affliction. "You don't see people dying in the streets
of hangovers," Dr Fingerote observes.
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