Hangover Cure By UCLA & Chinese Researchers To Be In Pill-Form Soon, Does Not Contain Sprite [Video]

Hangover Cures Are Tough To Find, But This May Be It:

So as all of us get ready for some of the most prime drinking days of the season,

One of the biggest ghosts of Christmas past still lingers: Hangovers.

And as much as we love to drink on the big holidays, hangovers still haunt us.

Well, SCIENCE! is changing that with a set of experiments on how to modify what our bodies already do,

Using natural enzymes to neutralize the worst parts of the drinking experience.

And it looks like they’re getting pretty close to that fabled “Hangover Cure”…

 
Mitigating The Downside So You Can Enjoy The Rest:
So what happens when you drink, other than Fun,

Is that your liver with the help of enzymes tries to break down the booze.

But doesn’t always turn into the most pleasant stuff as a result.

And No, a hangover is not just dehydration.

What scientists have done in a few cases is to find ways to mitigate the bad stuff,

Either by enhancing the good-stuff, or changing the process with new enzymes your body either doesn’t have or needs more of.

The Short Answer Is: Yes. It does work. Lab mice showed faster recovery, and lower amounts of the toxic byproducts using the new formula.

 
So Here’s What Happens When You Drink:
When alcohol gets into your body, enzymes in the liver break it down into byproducts.

The process goes:
1) Ethanol (alcohol) + ADH (alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme) = Acetaldehyde,
2) Then Acetaldehyde + ALDH (aldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme) = Acetate

Now Acetate is pretty innocuous and likely-responsible for several of the positive-effects reported from alcohol intake.

 
The Problem Is Acetaldehyde:
That’s the one that causes all the bad feelings like nausea, headache, muscle-aches, brain-swelling, and inflammation.

It may even be linked to the more serious diseases associated with alcohol because it’s a toxic carcinogen.

One of the main problems that occurs is when you drink too much, the bad stuff builds-up and your liver can’t convert it into the harmless stuff fast-enough.

Hence: Hangover.

 
So Here’s The Newest Solution:
Dr. Yunfeng Lu’s team at UCLA decided to fix all that with an upgrade to your body’s enzymes.

Through a therapy that needs more tweaking to make it simple, they were able to add 3 to your body’s process.

Using some crafty nano-tech, they got:
1) AOX (alcohol oxidase enzyme),
2) CAT (a cat) (not really) (it’s actually catalase enzyme),
3) and then more ALDH enzymes

Into your liver via the bloodstream to pump-up what it already does.

Now the first part is a little scary, because AOX and CAT both convert the alcohol into the bad stuff, Acetaldehyde.

But then the added ALDH is enough to quickly-convert that all into the safer Acetate very quickly.

(before the cat knocks everything off the liver and onto the floor, just because)

 
How Well Does It Work, You Ask?:
It happens pretty quick and with the amazing efficiency you’d need to beat a cat.

In 4 hours, Lu’s team was able to get the Blood-Alcohol-Level down by 45% relative to the untreated mice.

And in that time, the amount of ALDH administered kept the level of toxic Acetaldehyde extremely-low.

The treated mice even woke-up much sooner than the untreated ones.

 
Improved Sleep And Other Beneficial Uses:
-So the “liver steroids” might even reduce some of the harmful and disruptive effects of alcohol intake on sleep, too!

As mentioned before, that alone may help prevent a few cases of Dementia.

But even better than that, it can also be used in cases of poisoning in places like the Emergency Room,

And potentially even prevent or lower rates of some alcohol-related liver Cancers.

Now as-with The Oriental Raisin DHM fix, the ideal is not to empower people to drink tons more and defeat the good-effects of the drug,

But to minimize the harmful-effects.

 
Not All Remedies Are Created Equal, Including Chinese Sprite:
In a strangely-similar set of experiments to the ones by Jing Liang on the raisin-extract,

Researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China also tested a ton of remedies, teas, extracts, and supplements.

And out of all of them, they found that carbonated-drinks like Sprite and Club Soda were the best at interrupting our toxic nemesis, Acetaldehyde.

Now the problem with their tests is that they were all carried out with alcohol, enzymes, and potential-disruptors in lab-dishes.

Because they were all preliminary-tests to start on the path the what Lu’s team would develop.
 

Sprite Is Unlikely To Cure Hangovers And Alchohol-Poisoning:

And though many people have things like Soda with their Scotch, it’s unlikely that it or Sprite is magical in the way it changes alcohol-metabolism in an actual human body.

But on their quest, they did find something very interesting.

1) You want to get rid of Acetaldehyde any way you can.
2) Not all herbal remedies are helpful, appropriate, or non-toxic.

A few of the natural-fixes they found even made the toxic stuff Worse, and prolonged and intensified its exposure.

So folk-medicine is not enough. It needs some serious-testing first. And just because something comes from nature originally doesn’t mean it won’t kill you in some new & exciting way.

And if nothing else, Dr. Hua Bin-Li’s team now has a pretty good list of what you Don’t want to eat or drink around the time of alcohol-consumption.

 
So What Can You Do?:
The list of anecdotal hangover cures is about a mile long.

And it includes just about as many weird things as you can imagine, including Asparagus.

So feel free to try all the weird-stuff you can.

But so far, the best-evidence indicates you have to stop the inflammation and replace what the alcohol took out of you.

This is generally agreed-upon to take an anti-inflammatory that is ABSOLUTELY NOT TYLENOL because it is hell on your liver. And Kidneys.

 
Pedialyte Still Helps, But Some Others May Hurt:
The other part is to hydrate like crazy and to replace the Magnesium, B Vitamins, and other minerals that alcohol is so great at pulling out of you.

This adds-up to either Gatorade or Pedialyte. Your mileage may vary.

You can also subtract from the list of cures anything like Hemp Seed Tea or anything herbal, because as Dr. Li’s team found, at least a few of them are likely to hurt you instead of helping.

Even NAC is harmful if you take it afterward instead of 1 hour before all consumption.

And even though quality supplement companies like Himalaya have highly-rated products like PartySmart,

You still don’t know if the botanicals in them bring-along contamination from heavy metals and pesticides.

So until we all get the magical Chinese hangover cure, be careful out there and stock-up on sports-drinks!


Photo/Video Credits:
Video by Seeker
Photo “Champagne bottles cooling”, by SplitShire


Links:
• Sources: UCLA | ChemistryWorld
• More Coverage: NIH – Alcohol Metabolism | The mother of all hangover-cure lists
• Source Studies:
   • Adv.Mats – A Hepatocyte‐Mimicking Antidote for Alcohol Intoxication
   • Food+Function – Effects of herbal infusions, tea and carbonated beverages on alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase activity
   • Addiction – Carcinogenicity of acetaldehyde in alcoholic beverages: risk assessment outside ethanol metabolism