Before we begin, let's get one thing out of the way. There is no effective cure for a hangover.Sorry for that realness, but you know it's true. At best, you can eat greasy food, drink more booze, or hire a mobile medic to pump you full of saline and painkillers. The only real hangover prevention tool is to avoid alcohol, and the only treatment for one is to soothe the pain it causes as much as possible.
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That hasn't stopped human ingenuity from fighting against a condition as old as alcohol itself, though. Here are a few of the hangover "cures" we've come across this year.
First up: greasy fare. A bartender at one of Williamsburg's best bars knows a thing or two about hangovers (both causing them and suffering from them), and he prefers to keep things simple with a meat-stuffed sandwich topped with a fried egg.Over in Colombia, night owls treat their pounding headaches and bleary eyes with a bowl of soup studded with potatoes and pork ribs. It should preferably be eaten on the street, just outside of a converted shipping container.
In Korea, things get bloody—literally. Meat is always part of the equation in the beefy stew known as haejangguk, but chunks of congealed beef blood give drinkers the minerals they've depleted during the night's soju-fest.Another South Korean invention, less traditional than soup, is an ice cream that allegedly cures hangovers with the help of herbal medicine. Having no experience with Oriental raisin tree fruit (the actual name of the active ingredient) ourselves, we can't vouch for this one!
If that's not enough, everyone knows that a little hair of the dog always helps. Now, if we ever told you "try a bloody mary at brunch!" we'd rightly deserve all of the "thanks, Mom, for that breaking news" snark that you'd surely throw at us. And yet, here's one more gosh-dang bloody mary—apparently the "ultimate" bloody mary. Maybe we were still hungover when we wrote this? Sorry.
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There are also those who believe that a hangover can be prevented with science—that you can effectively have your booze-soaked cake and eat it, too. One company invented a "magic wand" that removes sulfites from wine, as though it were the sulfites, and not the alcohol, that makes you feel like a sun-dried turd in the morning.
And here's a patch. A vitamin patch that prevents hangovers. OK, sure.
One of our Dutch contributors experimented with a "hangover-free beer" and claims it actually worked. The brewer of the beer, however, confessed: "We have no scientific research on the effects, so I cannot guarantee that you won't have a hangover tomorrow."And that pretty much sums up our knowledge of hangovers in 2016. In closing: Drink lots of water!