Pickle juice. Fried eggs. Hair of the dog. If you love to party, you’ve probably tried everything to cure the dreaded hangover.
But the antidote could be in the refrigerator or in a bowl on the kitchen table, according to research: fruit.
Rising nutritionist and podcaster Dr. Rhonda Patrick cited studies showing that fructose, the sugar found naturally in fruit, can cut the rate at which the body eliminates alcohol by nearly half.
Speaking on a recent podcast, he said that eating fruits such as grapes, watermelon and bananas before a night out can reduce the amount of alcohol in your blood and therefore lessen your hangover the next day.
And, in theory, eating fruit the next morning could speed up the recovery process by replenishing salts and rehydrating the body.
The sugar and water in fruit help rehydrate the body, replenish vitamin and mineral reserves, restore electrolytes and increase blood glucose levels, which helps mitigate hangovers.
But fruit juice can be a poor substitute for whole, fresh produce, warned Dr. Patrick, who hosts the FoundMyFitness podcast.
When fruit is juiced, the sugars bound inside plant cells are released and easily absorbed into the bloodstream, causing a spike in blood sugar, followed by a crash.
But the sugars in whole fruit are absorbed at a slower rate, minimizing extreme peaks and dips.
A person would need a lot of fruit to counteract the effects of alcohol, according to research cited by Dr. Patrick.
Eating one gram of fructose per kilogram of body weight reduced the time a person spent drunk by about 31 percent.
For example, a 79 kg (about 175 lb) man would need about the same amount of fructose in grams, the equivalent of about five or six apples.
The fruit also increased the time it takes the body to process and eliminate alcohol by almost 45 percent, according to a 2009 report that she cited.
Certain fruits, such as berries and citrus fruits, also contain antioxidants that benefit liver function.
The liver is responsible for breaking down alcohol and a healthy liver can do this more effectively.
Dr Patrick said: “Am I suggesting that fructose is a hangover cure? No. But it is an interesting mechanism by which foods, and fruit in particular, can reduce some of the adverse effects of alcohol.
‘Note that fructose from whole fruit, with the benefit of its fiber and micronutrients, is very different from the highly refined fructose from fruit juices.’
In it study He cited scientists researching metabolic disorders who tested the effect of fructose in helping the body eliminate alcohol in 45 healthy men aged 25 to 35.
Studies have shown that taking fructose before or after drinking helps the body metabolize and eliminate alcohol more quickly.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick runs a podcast and health newsletter called FoundMyFitness that provides “distilled research on topics like fasting, depression, fitness, and longevity.”
All of them were moderate drinkers before the study, and for every gram of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, they were also given one gram/kilogram of body weight of fructose, although not in the form of whole fruit.
Fructose reduced the time it took people to feel drunk by about 30.7 percent and helped their bodies remove alcohol from the bloodstream more quickly, speeding up the process by about 44.7 percent.
Alcohol is a toxin that depresses parts of the brain that help us make decisions, judge situations, and coordinate our movements and reaction times.
When the body metabolizes alcohol, it produces a toxic compound called acetaldehyde.
Acetaldehyde is a major contributor to inflammation, dehydration and oxidative stress, leading to symptoms such as headache, nausea and fatigue.
The dark circles in the graph represent blood alcohol levels measured every 10 minutes after the subjects drank. A second experiment testing the effect of fructose on blood alcohol content (represented by the open circles) showed that fructose affected the rate at which alcohol was metabolized and eliminated from the bloodstream.
Dr Patrick said: ‘Eating some fruit with a meal before drinking can help lessen its negative effects and this could also involve mixing alcohol with fruit juice, which also contains fructose.’
At the same time, she added a warning about choosing fruity cocktails: ‘This enhanced ability to metabolise alcohol may come at a cost.
‘Consuming alcohol and fructose together actually worsened blood glucose and triglyceride (a type of fat in the blood) levels compared to consuming alcohol or fructose alone.’
Another study, published in the journal South African scientific journalThey tested the effects of consuming a concentrated amount of fructose in a glass of water before and after heavy drinking.
Researchers asked nine volunteer medical students and staff at an alcohol research institution to drink eight beverages of their choice within an hour.
Thirty minutes after stopping, investigators measured his blood alcohol level until it reached zero.
A week later, they repeated the same experiment, except this time they were given 100 g of fructose in water 20 minutes after drinking.
Adding fructose to the experiment shortened the time taken to reduce blood alcohol content below 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood (mg%) – the legal limit in South Africa – by about one hour and ten minutes.
They then tested fructose as a hangover preventative. Volunteers took one gram of fructose per kilogram of body weight in water before consuming alcohol equivalent to a double dose of liquor (50 milliliters) over five minutes.
After a 10-minute wait to allow the alcohol vapors in the mouth to dissipate, breath alcohol measurements were taken until the alcohol level reached zero.
On two separate occasions, two volunteers were given 50 milliliters of whiskey and their blood alcohol levels rose to about 40 mg%, then gradually fell to zero over about two hours.
The researchers gave volunteers fructose before they drank whiskey. This time, the increase in blood alcohol levels was significantly reduced.
One participant showed no detectable blood alcohol level, suggesting that either the alcohol was metabolized very quickly or that fructose influenced the metabolism of alcohol so that it was not detectable in the blood at the time of measurement.
This also suggests that the fructose intervention may have quelled any potential hangover.
The moderating effect on blood alcohol levels persisted in the second subject even when he was given another 50 ml of whisky three hours later.