There is no real hangover cure in the world, and you can’t train yourself to be able to drink more!

The Spring Festival is undoubtedly the most important festival for Chinese people. It is also the holiday with the most frequent drinking and dining parties in mainland China. The modern proverb "gaining three pounds during every festival" comes from this. Frequent socializing has even become a worry for some people throughout the entire festival. How to spend this festive holiday in a relaxed, happy and healthy way has become a consideration for modern people who value their own health.

Fanpu Magazine has launched this special edition of "Celebrating the Spring Festival in Health", which introduces some health knowledge related to holidays in a series of articles, and recommends some skills and methods for dealing with drinking and dining parties, hoping to help some readers. All colleagues in the editorial department of Fanpu Magazine also wish you a happy Spring Festival and good health for your family.

Written by | Fang Xuanchang

Except in rare cases, people do not expect to get drunk when they participate in drinking parties. But at the table, whether you like it or not, it is inevitable to encounter some people who want you to drink more, make you drink "happy", or want to compete with you in drinking.

As a result, a series of folk remedies for "resolving alcoholism" emerged among the people, of which there are roughly three most famous ones.

The first is to eat a raw egg 10 to 20 minutes before the drinking session begins, thinking that the egg white will cover the stomach wall and prevent alcohol absorption. This approach is not completely unreasonable. Raw eggs are indeed slower to digest and absorb than cooked eggs (the nutrient absorption rate is also lower), but using it to "isolate" alcohol and the stomach wall is limited in effect and is not significantly better than eating some food before drinking. In addition, in the entire digestive tract, the intestine is the more important place for alcohol absorption, and egg white cannot always prevent alcohol from entering the intestine through the pylorus. What needs to be considered more is that raw eggs are sometimes contaminated with salmonella, and this approach has a certain risk of food poisoning.

The second method is to induce vomiting by digging your throat every once in a while while going to the toilet. The "detoxification" effect of this method is often lower than many people expect, but the harm is clear (the vomit contains stomach acid, which has a serious corrosive effect on the esophagus and teeth). Alcohol is absorbed freely in the esophagus, and the absorption rate is faster than water. Unless you vomit it soon after drinking, a considerable amount of alcohol has been absorbed between drinking and going to the toilet (especially when drinking strong alcohol). And everyone at the table has to save face, so they don't go to the toilet too frequently.

The third method is to drink honey water before or during a drinking session. If you don’t consider the problem of clostridium botulinum toxin (gastric acid can destroy this toxin, and adults generally won’t be poisoned; infants under one year old have insufficient gastric acid secretion and need to avoid eating honey), or use artificial honey that is produced and stored in a standardized manner, this method is relatively reliable: honey water can reduce the alcohol hypoglycemia problem that often occurs after drinking, and the fructose in it can activate alcohol dehydrogenase (of course, this will also cause acetaldehyde to accumulate in the body faster).

In addition, there is a popular saying that drinking tea after drinking alcohol is a way to sober up with alcohol, which is also wrong. Theophylline and alcohol are both diuretics, which will only cause the body to dehydrate faster. Drinking sugar water or honey water can sometimes relieve the discomfort after drinking, because sugar water can slow down the hypoglycemia caused by alcohol.

There are also cheaters at the wine table. Some so-called wine experts only drink white wine and never get drunk even if they drink a thousand cups. In fact, most of the wine they drink goes into the carpet through the hot towel on the table, or they change the teacups and ask the waiter to pour it into the sewer. Compared with the aforementioned "internal strength" methods, this "external strength" does not harm health, but it is undoubtedly not worth promoting. Even if we don't investigate its wasteful and deceptive nature, what's the point of drinking to this extent?

If we take the decomposition rate of ethanol and its metabolite acetaldehyde as the standard, then there is no truly effective hangover drug in the world. The so-called drugs on the market that can sober up and increase alcohol tolerance (some of which are even imported) have no scientific basis. Taking the speed of alcohol metabolism as the standard, alcohol tolerance cannot be "trained". Long-term drinking does not speed up the metabolism of alcohol, but it can increase the body's (including the brain's) tolerance to alcohol, which will give people the illusion that their alcohol tolerance has increased.

For people who drink frequently, it is recommended to supplement vitamin B1 on a daily basis, because long-term drinking can lead to vitamin B1 deficiency in the body. Vitamin B1 is an important coenzyme for energy metabolism in the body. People with chronic deficiency may not have obvious symptoms, but if a large amount of carbohydrates is suddenly consumed in a short period of time, or a large amount of glucose is infused in the emergency room, the vitamin B1 in the body may be quickly depleted, resulting in serious encephalopathy.

For individuals who pay attention to health, the most effective way to avoid alcohol harm is of course not to drink or drink less. If you have to participate in a drinking party for various reasons, then try to control the total amount and speed of alcohol intake. First of all, you must avoid drinking on an empty stomach at the table. Eating some food before drinking can slow down the absorption of alcohol by the stomach and intestines; especially eating some carbohydrates first can avoid the symptoms of alcohol hypoglycemia too quickly. Drink more water during drinking, which can prevent dehydration and help dilute the alcohol, making the alcohol absorption slower. In addition, don't "gulp down" to show your generosity, drink slowly in small sips to give the liver more time to metabolize alcohol. As the old saying goes, you can't show off your alcohol tolerance and chess skills.

People who often drink have another conclusion: "mixing alcohol makes you drunk easily." In fact, the speed of getting drunk is only related to the speed at which the body absorbs alcohol. From this perspective, if you drink the same amount of alcohol in the same amount of time, then drinking strong alcohol alone will obviously make you drunk faster. This seems to contradict the experience of many people, but it is not difficult to understand: people often mistake vomiting as being drunk, but vomiting and being drunk are two different concepts. Mixing several kinds of alcohol together will make many people's stomachs uncomfortable quickly. And drunkenness is determined by the alcohol concentration in the blood.

For those who don't want to get drunk, there is one last trick at the table, which is a harmless and innocuous deception - it comes from a saying by Li Xunhuan in Gu Long's novel: Pretending to be drunk is much more fun than being really drunk.

This article is supported by the Science Popularization China Starry Sky Project

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

Special Tips

1. Go to the "Featured Column" at the bottom of the menu of the "Fanpu" WeChat public account to read a series of popular science articles on different topics.

2. Fanpu provides a function to search articles by month. Follow the official account and reply with the four-digit year + month, such as "1903", to get the article index for March 2019, and so on.

Copyright statement: Personal forwarding is welcome. Any form of media or organization is not allowed to reprint or excerpt without authorization. For reprint authorization, please contact the backstage of the "Fanpu" WeChat public account.