In the eternal search for a good time, there is the accompanying search of a cure for the effects of a good time. A hangover has all kinds of scientific explanations, but it really comes down to two things: dehydration and tiredness. When you drink, you don’t really sleep – you just kind of pass out. This means that you skip the normal stages of sleep, and it’s like staying awake all night. That means that hangover cures need to replace sleep (difficult), and put back the vitamins, minerals and water that your body has used to flush out the alcohol.

The Good
Vitamin B: You lose a lot of Vitamin B metabolising alcohol, and a dose of this the morning after will help a lot. Take it with a glass of water to fight dehydration. Tomato Juice. Again, for the vitamins and the liquid
A hot bath. This will raise you temperature and help sweat out the toxins that are a by-product of your body breaking down the alcohol. It won’t help the nausea though!

Coke. The soft drink, not the narcotic. The sugar will put some kick back in your system and for some strange reason, it helps with nausea. Plenty of pregnant women swear by it to help fight morning sickness. Water. Lots of it to replace the fluids.

Sauerkraut. Yes, pickled cabbage. There is an acid balance in sauerkraut that the body seems to love when it is fighting a hangover. If you can’t face the thought of food, mix the juice with tomato juice or vegetable juice. This one is the magic bullet.

The Bad
Hair of the Dog That Bit You. This is another way of saying ‘have another drink’ and yes it works for a little while, reactivating the drunkenness, but you are delaying the inevitable. A Big Fried Breakfast. This is fine if you are hungry, but doesn’t actually do anything to cure a hangover. The only real benefit is that the eggs and meat contain tryptophan (the body’s ‘sleepy’ chemical) and if you have time to go back to bed, you will catch up on the sleep you need.

Black Coffee. This is supposed to sober you up fast, as well as cure a hangover, but neither of these are true. Caffeine may help you feel more awake, but black coffee on an empty (and sensitive) stomach is more likely to irritate your stomach lining, and make you vomit, than it is to cure your hangover.

The Ugly
The Puerto Rican tradition is to rub a lemon under your drinking arm, while in Outer Mongolia they soothe the pain by downing a sheep’s eye. An old German tradition is to eat a pickled herring (followed by a glass of beer). Not sure if the pickled fish has anything to do with THAT cure! In ancient Greece, hungover folk breakfasted on owl eggs and sheep lungs, while the Romans opted for fried canary.

An old Romanian rumour is that a big bowl of tripe soup is all you need to feel better again – tripe being the lining of a sheep’s stomach. We think we’ll stick with the Vitamin B. Rent apartments in Budapest for some of the world’s best Palinka and a chance to practise your favourite hangover cures.