This title alone is a contempt for the experience of people and the spirit of experimentation over the past few hundred years, no, thousands of years! Although the biochemical knowledge of how to sober up has gradually flowed from the laboratory to the public, those who love to drink have long been seeking remedies through their own practice, hoping to prove whether these traditional folk remedies can bring them the sobriety they expect. The great scholar Pliny the Elder (24 AD - 79 AD) advised Roman citizens to eat owl eggs as a breakfast after drinking. In the Middle Ages, Patirelle let drunk people eat chopped eels mixed with bitter almonds. Today, people drink two bowls of meat soup after drinking. Those very experienced wine connoisseurs would even drink some Cologne beer after being dead drunk to sober up again.
Although the misery of drunkenness is commonplace among the public, nutritional medicine has so far neither warned that this phenomenon adds to the burden of the national economy, nor has it developed a recognized biochemical theory, nor has it given suggestions for treating post-drinking symptoms that can be accepted by the public. This obvious academic gap needs to be eliminated urgently. A currently popular theory developed by Swedish toxicologists suggests that acetaldehyde is the most likely culprit for post-drinking misery. Acetaldehyde is produced when alcohol is broken down in the liver. As supporting evidence, Swedish scientists cite the example of the Japanese. Like many other Asians, the Japanese lack the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which is necessary to break down alcohol in the body. Therefore, although the Japanese love to drink, they quickly feel nauseous and dizzy.
Some British biochemists objected to this conclusion. According to their research, many symptoms of drunkenness appear long after alcohol and acetaldehyde have disappeared. They believe that methanol is the real cause of the disease. Many cheap liquors and low-quality spirits contain methanol. Methanol is produced during the fermentation process and should be removed during distillation. In experiments involving heroic volunteers (it turned out that these participants, who were unfamiliar with the experimental site and dead drunk, were a great threat to laboratory equipment), British scientists solved the mystery of why many intense and uncomfortable symptoms follow drunkenness.
Methanol and ethanol (alcohol) are broken down by the same enzyme, but ethanol (alcohol) has absolute priority in being broken down. Only when the alcohol is completely broken down will it be methanol's turn. Since formic acid, which is quite toxic, is produced from methanol, it leads to a series of post-drinking discomforts such as headaches. This is also why drunk people still feel dizzy and groggy even after sobering up. If we follow the advice and drink a small glass of wine after these post-drinking symptoms appear, it will indeed have a relieving effect. Because the new alcohol supplement will shift the enzyme's decomposition effect from methanol back to alcohol. At this time, the already produced formic acid will be gradually decomposed until the amount of enzyme is again sufficient to start decomposing methanol. Therefore, in medicine, ethanol (alcohol) therapy is used for methanol poisoning.
Thanks to the efforts of scientists, drugs that can effectively counteract post-drinking discomfort symptoms have been developed. In this regard, chemists in Munich are at the forefront. The substance they developed is called N-acetyl-cysteine. This substance provides the body with cysteine. The body needs enough cysteine to produce a sufficient amount of glutathione in the body, and this substance helps the body detoxify effectively. Perhaps Pliny the Elder's suggestion for people to eat owl eggs is not so strange: eggs contain a large amount of cysteine. Of course, whether owl eggs really contain a larger amount of cysteine still needs to be confirmed by scientists.
The mystery of the intense thirst after drinking has also been solved. From a scientific point of view, this thirst is also the cause of severe headaches. Alcohol interferes with an important gland in the brain's pituitary gland, which is an organ that regulates hormonal balance. Then, because each hormone is unconstrained, they all absorb water from the body. This leads to more water and sodium salts being excreted from the body than our intake. Therefore, the body absorbs water from many other organs. Ian Card, a neurology expert at the National Hospital in London, is worried that this will lead to a certain degree of dehydration in our brains. Because there is a very delicate connection between the cerebral cortex and the skull, even a tiny change can cause severe headaches.
The old folk remedies circulating among the public for dealing with post-drinking misery also confirm this view. People usually use a bowl of soup to relieve the discomfort: this can provide the body with salt and relieve hunger and thirst—although we have no appetite at this time. Even the experience of drinking mineral water before diving into bed is very scientific. Replenishing water slows down the dehydration of sensitive organs in the body, thereby alleviating the uncomfortable feeling the next morning—of course, on the premise that we can still open a bottle of mineral water after getting drunk. Well, let's drink to that!