How Pedialyte Muscled Out Gatorade to Win the Adult Hangover Market | Hacker News Reader

How Pedialyte Muscled Out Gatorade to Win the Adult Hangover Market

vox.com

17 pointsdpflan28 comments

How are these things different from home-made rehydration solutions? Basically it's sugar and salt in a specific proportion, right? Or are the salts more complicated than what you have available in your average kitchen cupboard?

Pedialyte also has flavoring

And you can pick a bottle up from a Walgreens with no effort. You’re not paying for the ingredients per se, but the convenience.

If I’m buying Pedialyte, I’m in no condition to make it. I just want to hydrate and go back to feeling like death on a horizontal surface.

Going to Walgreens with a hangover sounds like way more work than five minutes fumbling with measuring cups in my kitchen.

Some people stop by on the way home the night before.

Oh it’s special, you can’t possibly make Pedialyte at home without a laba- we’ll really it’s piss easy. Sugar, salt, water and... that’s it. If you want get fancy and include the classic flavors and colors, add powdered drink mix to taste or juice.

That’s literally it.

The ratio is 4 cups of water (make three cold and one hot, mix the sugar and salt into the hot water then mix it all together.)

2 tablespoons of sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Optionals:

1/2 teaspoon baking soda for upset stomach

1 teaspoon Kool Aid or Jello Powder.

The end.

Oh, and it won’t cure a hangover, nothing does. Dehydration is part of a hangover, but by the time you have the hangover the damage is done. Other factors are metabolic stress from your liver handling the alcohol and metabolic intermediaries, congeners, and vascular reactions. Drinking water and eating normal food will keep a hangover from being worse than it has to be, but there is no cure. There are things you can do to prevent aspects of it, such as drinking at least a unit of water per unit of alcohol while you’re drinking, avoiding sugar (competes with alcohol for metabolism), and avoiding darker liquids (which have more congeners). If you’re pre-med hanging a banana bag helps, but it’s not really then responsible thing for most to do.

In short, once you’re hungover, only time will help.

> drinking at least a unit of water per unit of alcohol

What's a unit of water? Presumably not the same as a unit of alcohol which is is 10ml.

(Am currently drinking approximately 6.5 units of water/grape-juice per unit of alcohol on that basis, and am not holding out much hope for hangover avoidance)

Sorry that was massively unclear of me, and the answer is 8oz of water is a serving, unit, whatever. Aka ~120ml.

Just water though, not juice, or soda or coffee. The first is loaded with sugar which competes with alcohol for liver time, and the latter two often contain caffeine which is a diuretic.

You would need a source of potassium in additional to the salt and sugar. An easy source is coconut water.

Buy a shaker of something like Nu-Salt or other sodium alternative and pop it in the mix. That’s not a factor in a hangover though, it really only matters if you’re losing a lot of fluids due to illness.

What about the pediatric hangover market?

Dioralyte sachets are gaining traction in the UK, they work quite well.

They also work great if you are actually sick. I had some British family visiting and they left me some and it was a great relief to my ailing guts.

A few cups of water before bed does wonders for me.

Is Pedialyte getting famous because it's actually used for hangovers, or is it getting famous because it's associated with some drug consumption (either as an ingredient or as something available at festivals, etc.) ?

It's getting famous primarily because doctors are recommending it for dealing with the flu, and because HS and college kids are using it during sports training. People using it while rolling or whatever might have some cultural cachet, but there's no way that accounts for more than a nominal amount of their annual sales.

"Adult" hangover market. Humorously redundant wording, haha.

Pretty sure Ibuprofen and brunch is winning the adult hangover market

Ibuprofen (and other OTC painkillers, especially paracetamol) are not risk free, they'll screw your liver seriously when used too often.

edit: yes, Ibuprofen messes up the kidneys, not just the liver, sorry for the inaccuracy. Still: don't overuse the stuff, people, it's dangerous. Having "ibuprofen and brunch" basically a meme is absolutely irresponsible.

doesn't really mean they aren't winning though

Ibuprofen is metabolized by kidneys; but as for the liver, yes its action can be affected by acetaminophen (paracetamol).

Ibuprofen isn't harmful to your liver in ways that acetaminophen is. It will screw up your kidneys long before it ruins your liver.

Acetaminophen can be dangerous, especially when taken on an abused liver.

A potentially bigger issue with ibuprofen is that it increases heart attack and stroke risk, which acetaminophen doesn't do [0]. Plain old aspirin is probably the safest drug. Its main risk factors are that it can cause stomach problems, it's ototoxic, and some people are allergic to it.

[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fda-strengthens-warning-...

Having a bit of a cry while waiting for some Deliveroo is also a serious player in this market segment.

Great native ad.

Since when was Gatorade used for hangovers?

Personally, I can say 1997

Because it actually works?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com