Is Guinness really ‘good for you’? | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Guinness, like other Irish stouts, enjoys a seasonal popularity every St. Patrick’s Day. It has also been touted as being “good for you,” at least by its own advertising posters decades ago.

But can this creamy, rich and filling beer really be added to a list of healthy beverages? Or is its reputation just good marketing? We researched the beer’s history and talked to brewing experts and break out the good, the not-so-great and the ingenuity of Guinness.

The original Guinness is a type of ale known as stout. It’s made from a grist (grain) that includes a large amount of roasted barley, which gives it its intense burnt flavor and very dark color. And though you wouldn’t rank it as healthful as a vegetable, the stouts in general, as well as other beers, may be justified in at least some of their nutritional bragging rights.

According to Charlie Bamforth, distinguished professor emeritus of brewing sciences at the University of California, Davis, most beers contain significant amounts of antioxidants, B vitamins, the mineral silicon (which may help protect against osteoporosis), soluble fiber and prebiotics, which promote the growth of “good” bacteria in your gut.

And Guinness may have a slight edge compared with other brews, even over other stouts.

“We showed that Guinness contained the most folate of the imported beers we analyzed,” Bamforth said. Folate is a B vitamin that our bodies need to make DNA and other genetic material. It’s also necessary for cells to divide. According to his research, stouts on average contain 12.8 micrograms of folate, or 3.2% of the recommended daily allowance.

Because Guinness contains a lot of unmalted barley, which contains more fiber than malted grain, it is also one of the beers with the highest levels of fiber, according to Bamforth. (Note: Though the US Department of Agriculture lists beer as containing zero grams of fiber, Bamforth said his research shows otherwise.)

Bamforth has researched and coauthored studies published in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing and the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists.

Here’s more potentially good news about Guinness: Despite its rich flavor and creamy consistency, it’s not the highest in calories compared with other beers. A 12-ounce serving of Guinness Draught has 125 calories. By comparison, the same size serving of Budweiser has 145 calories, Heineken has 142 calories, and Samuel Adams Cream Stout has 189 calories. In the United States, Guinness Extra Stout, by the way, has 149 calories.

This makes sense when you consider that alcohol is the main source of calories in beers. Guinness Draught has a lower alcohol content, at 4.2% alcohol by volume, compared with 5% for Budweiser and Heineken, and 4.9% for the Samuel Adams Cream Stout.

In general, moderate alcohol consumption – defined by the USDA’s dietary guidelines for Americans as no more than two drinks per day for men or one drink per day for women – may protect against heart disease. So you can check off another box.

Guinness is still alcohol, and consuming too much can impair judgment and contribute to weight gain. Heavy drinking (considered more than 14 drinks a week for men or more than seven drinks a week for women) and binge drinking (five or more drinks for men, and four or more for women, in about a two-hour period) are also associated with many health problems, including liver disease, pancreatitis and high blood pressure.

According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, “alcohol is the most commonly used addictive substance in the United States: 17.6 million people, or one in every 12 adults, suffer from alcohol abuse or dependence along with several million more who engage in risky, binge drinking patterns that could lead to alcohol problems.”

And while moderate consumption of alcohol may have heart benefits for some, consumption of alcohol can also increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer for each drink consumed daily.

Many decades ago, in Ireland, it would not have been uncommon for a doctor to advise pregnant and nursing women to drink Guinness. But today, experts (particularly in the United States) caution of the dangers associated with consuming any alcohol while pregnant.

“Alcohol is a teratogen, which is something that causes birth defects. It can cause damage to the fetal brain and other organ systems,” said Dr. Erin Tracy, an OB/GYN at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive gynecology. “We don’t know of any safe dose of alcohol in pregnancy. Hence we recommend abstaining entirely during this brief period of time in a woman’s life.”

What about beer for breastfeeding? “In Britain, they have it in the culture that drinking Guinness is good for nursing mothers,” said Karl Siebert, professor emeritus of the food science department and previous director of the brewing program at Cornell University.

Beer in general has been regarded as a galactagogue, or stimulant of lactation, for much of history. In fact, according to irishtimes.com, breastfeeding women in Ireland were once given a bottle of Guinness a day in maternity hospitals.

According to Domhnall Marnell, the Guinness ambassador, Guinness Original (also known as Guinness Extra Stout, depending on where it was sold) debuted in 1821, and for a time, it contained live yeast, which had a high iron content, so it was given to anemic individuals or nursing mothers then, before the effects of alcohol were fully understood.

Some studies have showed evidence that ingredients in beer can increase prolactin, a hormone necessary for milk production; others have showed the opposite. Regardless of the conclusions, the alcohol in beer also appears to counter the benefits associated with increased prolactin secretion.

“The problem is that alcohol temporarily inhibits the milk ejection reflex and overall milk supply, especially when ingested in large amounts, and chronic alcohol use lowers milk supply permanently,” said Diana West, coauthor of “The Breastfeeding Mother’s Guide to Making More Milk.”

“Barley can be eaten directly, or even made from commercial barley drinks, which would be less problematic than drinking beer,” West said.

If you’re still not convinced that beer is detrimental to breastfeeding, consider this fact: A nursing mother drinking any type of alcohol puts her baby in potential danger. “The fetal brain is still developing after birth – and since alcohol passes into breast milk, the baby is still at risk,” Tracy said.

“This is something we would not advocate today,” Marnell agreed. “We would not recommend to anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding to be enjoying our products during this time in their life.”

Regarding the old wives’ tale about beer’s effects on breastfeeding, Marnell added, “It’s not something that Guinness has perpetuated … and if (people are still saying it), I’d like to say once and for all, it’s not something we support or recommend.”

Assuming you are healthy and have the green light to drink beer, you might wonder why Guinness feels like you’ve consumed a meal, despite its lower calorie and alcohol content.

It has to do with the sophistication that goes into producing and pouring Guinness. According to Bamforth, for more than half a century, Guinness has put nitrogen gas into its beer at the packaging stage, which gives smaller, more stable bubbles and delivers a more luscious mouthfeel. It also tempers the harsh burnt character coming from the roasted barley. Guinness cans, containing a widget to control the pour, also have some nitrogen.

Guinness is also dispensed through a special tap that uses a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. “In Ireland, Guinness had a long history of hiring the best and brightest university graduates regardless of what they were trained in,” Siebert said. “And they put them to work on things they needed. One was a special tap for dispensing Guinness, which has 11 different nozzles in it, that helps to form the fine-bubbled foam.”

The foam is remarkably long-lasting. “After you get a freshly poured Guinness, you can make a face in the foam, and by the time you finish drinking it, the face is still there,” Siebert said.

The famous advertising Guinness slogans – including “It’s a good day for a Guinness” – started through word of mouth, said Marnell. “In 1929, when we were about to do our first ad, we asked (ourselves), ‘What stance should we take?’ So we sent around a group of marketers (in Ireland and the UK) to ask Guinness drinkers why they chose Guinness, and nine out of 10 said their belief was that the beer was healthy for them. We already had this reputation in the bars before we uttered a word about the beer.

“That led to the Gilroy ads that were posted,” Marnell explained, referring to the artist John Gilroy, responsible for the Guinness ads from 1928 to the 1960s. “You’ll see the characters representing the Guinness brand – the toucan, the pelican – and slogans like ‘Guinness is good for you’ or ‘Guinness for Strength.’ But those were from the 1920s, ’30s and ‘40s.”

Today, he said, the company would not claim any health benefits for its beer. “If anyone is under the impression that there are health benefits to drinking Guinness, then unfortunately, I’m the bearer of bad news. Guinness is not going to build muscle or cure you of influenza.”

In fact, Guinness’ parent company, Diageo, spends a lot of effort supporting responsible drinking initiatives and educating consumers about alcohol’s effects. Its DrinkIQ page offers information such as calories in alcohol, how your body processes it and when alcohol can be dangerous, including during pregnancy.

“One of the main things we focus on … is that while we would love people to enjoy our beer, we want to make sure they do so as responsibly as possible,” Marnell said. “We would never recommend that anyone drink to excess, and (we want to make people) aware of how alcohol effects the body.”

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  • And again: Most health providers in the US would advise forgoing all alcohol if you are pregnant, nursing or have other health or medical issues where alcohol consumption is not advised.

    So responsibly celebrate St. Patrick this year a little wiser about the health benefits and risks with one of its signature potables.

    This story originally published in 2017.



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    Alcohol and dementia: Study finds benefits in minimal drinking, but it’s complicated | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Keeping alcohol consumption to one or two drinks a day lessened the odds of developing dementia, according to a study of nearly 4 million South Koreans.

    However, drinking more than two drinks a day increased that risk, according to the study published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.

    “We found that maintaining mild to moderate alcohol consumption as well as reducing alcohol consumption from a heavy to moderate level were associated with a decreased risk of dementia,” said first author Dr. Keun Hye Jeon, an assistant professor at CHA Gumi Medical Center, CHA University in Gumi, South Korea, in an email.

    But don’t rush to the liquor store, experts say.

    “This study was well done and is extremely robust with 4 million subjects, but we should be cautious not to over interpret the findings,” said Alzheimer’s researcher Dr. Richard Isaacson, a preventive neurologist at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases of Florida. He was not involved in the new study.

    Alcohol use can be a risk factor for breast and other cancers, and consuming too much can contribute to digestive problems, heart and liver disease, hypertension, stroke, and a weak immune system over time, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    There are red flags for Alzheimer’s as well. For example, if a person has one or two copies of the APOE4 gene variant, which raises your risk of developing the mind-wasting disease, drinking is not a good choice, Isaacson said.

    “Alcohol has been shown to be harmful for brain outcomes in people with that risk gene — and about 25% of the US population carries one copy of APOE4,” he said.

    The new study examined the medical records of people covered by the Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS), which provides a free health exam twice a year to insured South Koreans who are 40 and older. In addition to doing various tests, examiners asked about each person’s drinking, smoking and exercise habits.

    The study looked at the data collected in 2009 and 2011 and categorized people by their self-reported drinking levels. If a person said they drank less than 15 grams (approximately 0.5 ounces) of alcohol a day, they were considered “mild” drinkers.

    In the United States, a standard drink contains 14 grams of alcohol, which is roughly the same as 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.

    If study participants told doctors they drank 15 to 29.9 grams a day — the equivalent of two standards drinks in the US — the researchers categorized them as “moderate” drinkers. And if people said they drank over 30 grams, or three or more drinks a day, researchers considered them “heavy” drinkers.

    Researchers also looked at whether people sustained or changed the amount they drank between 2009 and 2011, Jeon said.

    “By measuring alcohol consumption at two time points, we were able to study the relationship between reducing, ceasing, maintaining and increasing alcohol consumption and incident dementia,” he said.

    The team then compared that data to medical records in 2018 — seven or eight years later — to see if anyone studied had been diagnosed with dementia.

    After adjusting for age, sex, smoking, exercise level and other demographic factors, researchers found people who said they drank at a mild level over time — about a drink a day — were 21% less likely to develop dementia than people who never drank.

    People who said they continued to drink at moderate level, or about two drinks a day, were 17% less likely to develop dementia, the study found.

    “One has to be cautious when interpreting studies using medical records. They can be fraught with challenges in how diseases are coded and studied,” Isaacson said. “Any anytime you ask people to recall their behaviors, such as drinking, it leaves room for memory errors.”

    The positive pattern did not continue as drinking increased. People who drank heavily — three or more drinks a day — were 8% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia, the study found.

    If heavy drinkers reduced their drinking over time to a moderate level, their risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s fell by 12%, and the risk of all-cause dementia fell by 8%.

    However, people aren’t very good at judging how much alcohol they are drinking, Isaacson said.

    “People don’t really monitor their pours of wine, for example,” Isaacson said. “They may think they are drinking a standard-sized glass of wine, but it’s really a glass and a half every time. Drink two of those pours and they’ve had three glasses of wine. That’s no longer mild or moderate consumption.”

    In addition, too many people who think they are moderate drinkers do all of their drinking on weekends. Binge drinking is on the rise worldwide, even among adults, studies show.

    “If someone downs five drinks on Saturday and Sunday that’s 10 drinks a week so that would qualify as a moderate alcohol intake,” Isaacson said. “To me, that is not that is not the same as having a glass of wine five days a week with a meal, which slows consumption.”

    The new study also found that starting to drink at a mild level was associated with a decreased risk of all-cause dementia and Alzheimer’s, “which, to our knowledge, has never been reported in previous studies,” the authors wrote.

    However, “none of the existing health guidelines recommends starting alcohol drinking,” Jeon said, adding that since the study was observational, no cause and effect can be determined.

    “Our findings regarding a initiation of mild alcohol consumption cannot be directly translated into clinical recommendations, thereby warranting additional studies to confirm these associations further,” Jeon said.

    A study published in March 2022 found that just one pint of beer or glass of wine a day can shrink the overall volume of the brain, with the damage increasing as the number of daily drinks rises.

    On average, people between 40 and 69 who drank a pint of beer or 6-ounce glass of wine per day for a month had brains that appeared two years older than those who only drank half of a beer, according to that previous study.

    “I’ve never personally suggested someone to start drinking moderate amounts of alcohol if they were abstinent,” Isaacson said. “But there’s really not a one-size-fits-all approach towards counseling a patient on alcohol consumption.”

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    Myths and facts about treating a hangover | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.



    CNN
     — 

    Are you celebrating the first day of 2023 with a hangover?

    If so, you might be looking for a method to ease your misery. There are certainly a lot of so-called hangover cures, some dating back centuries.

    “The ancient Greeks believed that eating cabbage could cure a hangover, and the Romans thought that a meal of fried canaries would do the trick,” said Dr. John Brick, former chief of research at the Center of Alcohol Studies, Education and Training Division at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who authored “The Doctor’s Hangover Handbook.”

    “Today, some Germans believe that a hearty breakfast of red meat and bananas cures hangovers. You might find some French drinking strong coffee with salt, or some Chinese drinking spinach tea,” he said. “Some of the more unusual hangover cures are used by some people in Puerto Rico, who rub half a lemon under their drinking arm.”

    In truth, the only cure for a hangover is time, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

    “A person must wait for the body to finish clearing the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism, to rehydrate, to heal irritated tissue, and to restore immune and brain activity to normal,” according to the institute. That recovery process can take up to 24 hours.

    Are there things you can do to ease your transition? Possibly, experts say, but many common hangover “cures” may make your hangover worse. Here’s how to separate fact from fiction.

    Having another drink, or the “hair of the dog that bit you,” is a well-known cure for a hangover, right? Not really, experts say.

    The reason some people believe it works is because once the calming effects of alcohol pass, the brain on a hangover is overstimulated. (It’s also the reason you wake up in the middle of the night once your body has metabolized alcohol.)

    “You’ve got this hyperexcitability in the brain after the alcohol is gone,” said Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

    “If you look at the brain of somebody with a hangover, even though the person might feel tired, their brain is actually overexcited,” he said.

    Consuming more alcohol normalizes the brain again, “because you’re adding a sedative to your excited brain,” Swift said. “You feel better until the alcohol goes away and the cycle repeats in a way.”

    The answer is yes, depending on hangover symptoms, Brick said. If you’re a coffee drinker, skipping your morning cup of joe may lead to caffeine withdrawal on top of your hangover.

    But coffee can irritate the stomach lining, which is already inflamed by alcohol, Brick said. So if you are queasy and nauseous, coffee may only make matters worse.

    “If you have a hangover, have a quarter of a cup of coffee,” Brick suggested. “See if you feel better — it takes about 20 minutes for the caffeine to start to have some noticeable effect.

    “If coffee doesn’t make you feel better, don’t drink anymore. Obviously, that’s not the cure for your hangover.”

    Forget eating a greasy breakfast in the wee hours after a night of drinking — you’re adding insult to injury, Swift said: “Greasy food is harder to digest, so it’s probably good to avoid it.”

    Eating greasy food also doesn’t make much sense. The alcohol we drink, called ethyl alcohol or ethanol, is the byproduct of fermenting carbohydrates and starches, usually some sort of grain, grape or berry. While it may create some tasty beverages, ethanol is also a solvent, Brick said.

    “It cuts through grease in your stomach much the same way it cleans grease off oily car parts,” he said.

    Instead, experts suggest using food to prevent hangovers, by eating before you have that first drink.

    “Eating food loaded with protein and carbohydrates can significantly slow down the absorption of alcohol,” Brick said. “The slower the alcohol gets to your brain, the less rapid the ‘shock’ to your brain.”

    Alcohol dehydrates, so a headache and other hangover symptoms may be partly due to constricted blood vessels and a loss of electrolytes, essential minerals such as sodium, calcium and potassium that your body needs.

    If you’ve vomited, you’ve lost even more electrolytes, and all of this can lead to fatigue, confusion, irregular heart rate, digestive problems and more.

    Replacing lost fluids with water or a type of sports drink with extra electrolytes can help boost recovery from a hangover, Swift said.

    Taking over-the-counter pain meds can be dangerous, especially if you take too many while intoxicated, experts say. Taking an acetaminophen, such as Tylenol, can further damage your overtaxed liver, while aspirin and ibuprofen can irritate your stomach lining.

    “You should never, never take alcohol with acetaminophen or Tylenol,” Swift said. “You can actually cause liver damage from an overdose of Tylenol.”

    But aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen are “theoretically” OK, he added.

    “Even though they tend to be anti-inflammatory in the body, they can cause inflammation in the stomach,” Swift said. “Don’t take them on an empty stomach; always take anti-inflammatories with food.”

    While most alcohol is handled by the liver, a small amount leaves the body unchanged through sweat, urine and breathing.

    Get up, do some light stretching and walking, and drink plenty of water to encourage urination, Brick said.

    “Before you go to sleep and when you wake up, drink as much water as you comfortably can handle,” he said. You can also take a multivitamin “before you hit the shower in the morning (to) replenish lost vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.”

    If you would rather have something warm and soothing, Brick suggested broth or other homemade soups.

    “These will also help to replace lost salts, including potassium and other substances,” he said, “but will not make you sober up faster or improve impairment due to intoxication or hangover.”

    Store shelves are packed with so-called hangover cures. Unfortunately, there’s no proof they work. In 2020, researchers published what they called the “world’s largest randomised double-blind placebo-controlled” trial of supplements containing vitamins, minerals, plant extracts and antioxidants and found no real improvement in hangover symptoms.

    Even if one solution works, it likely won’t fix all your symptoms, experts say.

    “The effects of alcohol and alcoholic beverages are so complicated, so complex,” Swift said, “that any solution might address one or two of the symptoms but won’t address them all.”

    What does work for a hangover? Time. It will take time for your body to release all the toxins causing your misery, experts say. And the only way to prevent a hangover is to abstain.

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    How to beat that New Year’s hangover before it starts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Toasting the birth of the new year is an age-old ritual, and for many, so is that dreaded morning aftermath — a hangover.

    What seemed like great fun at the time is now causing your hands to shake, your head to pound and your heart to race, not to mention other unpleasant symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vomiting, light sensitivity and excruciating thirst.

    Why are you suffering? Because the liquor that smoothly passed your lips is now wreaking havoc in your body, causing dehydration, stomach distress and inflammation. These ailments peak about the time all the alcohol leaves your body.

    There is no scientifically proven way to cure a hangover, but experts say you can prevent one — or at least keep that morning-after misery to a minimum. Here’s how.

    Forget a late-night meal after a night of drinking — that’s much too late, experts say. Instead, eat before your first drink and keep noshing as the night goes on.

    “Food in the stomach slows gastric emptying and can reduce hangover symptoms,” said Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

    Why does food help? Because most alcohol isn’t absorbed by an empty stomach but via the intestinal tract just below it, Swift said.

    “If somebody does shots on an empty stomach, for example, all that pure alcohol is not diluted by the stomach and is passed to the intestine very quickly,” said Swift, who has studied alcohol abuse since the 1990s.

    “If the stomach contains food, however, there are gastric juices and enzymes that mix the food and the alcohol, and only small amounts of food are passed into the intestine,” he said. “Now the alcohol is diluted in the stomach, and only a small quantity of alcohol is absorbed at any time.”

    The same principle applies to water and other nonalcoholic beverages, Swift said. “If alcohol is mixed with fluid, it’s diluted, so when it goes into your intestines, it’s not as irritating. You’re less likely to have inflamed intestines or an inflamed stomach lining.”

    Drinking water can help reduce the dehydration that occurs from downing too many alcoholic drinks.

    There’s another benefit to downing water between drinks, said Dr. John Brick, former chief of research at the Center of Alcohol Studies, Education and Training Division at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

    “The primary cause of hangovers is dehydration and the loss of fluids, along with vitamins and minerals,” said Brick, who authored “The Doctor’s Hangover Handbook” and published scientific papers on the biobehavioral effects of alcohol and other drugs.

    Downing just 3½ alcoholic drinks can result in the loss of up to a quart of water over several hours, Brick added. “That’s a good amount of water that has to be replenished.”

    Dehydration from alcohol may affect a woman even more, and she is more likely to suffer a hangover, even if she drinks less than a man, Swift said. That’s because a man has a higher percentage of body water than a woman of the same height and weight, so the same amount of alcohol will be more diluted in a man, he said.

    “The woman will have a higher concentration of blood alcohol because her body contains less water to dilute it,” he said. “Women are much more susceptible to the deleterious effects of alcohol (and they) get more intoxicated and develop alcohol liver disease sooner in life than men do.”

    The alcohol we drink, called ethyl alcohol or ethanol, is the byproduct of fermenting carbohydrates and starches, usually some sort of grain, grape or berry. We use byproducts of fermentation in other ways: Ethanol is added to the gasoline in our cars, and methyl alcohol or methanol — a toxic substance — is used as a solvent, pesticide and alternative fuel source. Also called wood alcohol, methyl alcohol made by bootleggers blinded or killed thousands of people during Prohibition.

    That’s not all — the list of byproducts or chemicals added by manufacturers for flavor and taste can read like a list of supplies at an industrial warehouse: ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, n-propanol, isobutanol, n-butanol, isopentanol and isoamyl alcohols. While these congeners, as they are called, are added in small, nontoxic amounts, some people are overly sensitive to their effects.

    Overall, dark-colored beer and spirits tend to contain more congeners and thus may be more likely to cause hangovers, experts say. A 2010 study investigated the intensity of hangovers in people who drank the darker-colored liquor bourbon versus clear vodka.

    “Congeners in bourbon … significantly increased hangover intensity, which is not too surprising since bourbon has about 37 times the amount of congeners as vodka,” Brick said.

    Chemical preservatives called sulfites, known to cause allergic reactions in sensitive people, are also a natural byproduct of fermentation in small quantities. However, many manufacturers of beer and wine add sulfites to their products to extend shelf life. (Sulfites are also added to soda, cereals, sweeteners, canned and ultra-processed foods, medications and more.)

    Sweet and white wines tend to have more sulfites than red, but red wines contain more tannins, which are bitter or astringent compounds found in the skin and seeds of grapes. Like sulfites, tannins can trigger allergic reactions in people who are sensitive.

    As a result, limiting your drinking to light beers, clear liquors and white wine might help keep hangovers at bay.

    In the end, however, experts say there is only one true preventive — or cure — for a hangover: Don’t drink.

    “There’s no simple cure because there are so many complex factors that are producing the multiple symptoms of a hangover,” Swift said. “And that’s why the only real cure for a hangover is to not drink alcohol or drink such a low amount of alcohol that it won’t trigger a hangover.”

    Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the process through which alcohol is absorbed in the body.

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