Hacker News Reader

Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

Would drinking oral rehydration solution mixed with vodka prevent the hangover from occurring in the first place?

Yes, but likely unnecessary. Though unless you're drinking alone you're probably having some salty nuts or other snacks while you drink so really water will be fine. These solutions are for people who are in serious acute dehydration, which you won't be after a night of drinking unless there are other factors.

Simply drinking a large glass of water before going out, and having a glass of water after each alcoholic drink, is a pretty good way to avoid a hangover.

(also the water will help you pee out a lot of toxic crud that your kidneys have kindly removed from your bloodstream for you).

The most effective time to consume oral rehydration solution would be after drinking. Alcohol is a diuretic causing you to lose more water than normal through urine, and eventually also electrolytes (although at first, your body will make an effort to retain them). So if you drink the ORS whilst still in diuresis, it won't have any negative effects, but you're more likely to urinate away the contents. After drinking, but before sleeping is anecdotally the optimal way to use ORS products for the hangover use case.

A lot of the hangover effect comes from acetaldehyde, a somewhat toxic product of the metabolism of alcohol.

A big part of the hangover is waiting for your body to get rid of acetaldehyde. Drinking more reduces your awareness of the effects of acetaldehyde, but increases the total amount of it in your body, prolonging the hangover.

Aldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes employ the sulfur chemistry of cysteine. Taking n-acetyl cysteine before you drink helps your body to synthesize the ALDH. Glutamate (easily available from monosodium glutamate) is required, along with water, for the enzyme to process aldehydes into carboxylic acids. The reaction is powered by NAD+/NADH, so adequate niacin and tryptophan in your diet would help you have enough of that, but that system also powers the alcohol dehydrogenase that is producing the aldehydes.

Whether you get hangovers or not largely depends on the relative efficiency of your ADH versus your ALDH enzymes. If you clear aldehyde faster than you can metabolize the alcohol, you never get hangovers unless you have some odd sulfur-based chemistry happening in your body. If you clear aldehyde slower than you metabolize alcohol, you get hangover effects. If you have an ALDH defect, or are taking a drug that antagonizes it, you might experience "Asian blush", with immediate unpleasant reactions to drinking alcohol.

Dehydration has its own unpleasant symptoms, and since alcohol is a diuretic, it can dehydrate you. Drinking water or electrolyte rehydration solutions will help with that. You can be fully hydrated and still have a hangover, but at least you won't have a hangover and be dehydrated too.

I have never had a hangover, but the chemistry suggests that if you get them routinely, supplementing your diet with NAC might help. Eating tofu and shiitake (high in tryptophan/niacin) with MSG as you drink or after you drink might also help. It's mostly your genetics, though. If you get bad hangovers, there's no easy cure for it other than to drink less alcohol.

... I've done this.

At the start of my bachelor party (and possibly later on that night? It gets blurry) we brought workout hydration powder, the kind you use during and after a gym session. Drank a lot of it ideally to prevent or reduce hangovers.

I have no idea how much it helped, because I was still hungover the next day.

As J_Sherz noted above, hydration before or during drinking isn't very helpful as alcohol is diuretic, so chances are you'll literally be pissing it away. You want to rehydrate afterwards, after you've stopped drinking and when you wake up (during the night if you wake up to piss, and the day after).

I like your thinking. It would help but not prevent it. Sleep deprivation is also a big factor in hangovers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com