Who wouldn’t want to avoid a hangover after a night of drinking alcohol? You may have heard ads on podcasts or seen them on social media: A relatively new class of products claims to allow you to enjoy your night out partying, without suffering hangover symptoms the next day—that is, if you swallow the products before or after imbibing.
Different products contain different ingredients. These might include electrolytes, antioxidants, probiotics, certain vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients—in the form of powders, capsules, or drinks—that companies claim mitigate the effects of alcohol on your body.
For example, ZBiotics’ pre-alcohol probiotic drink claims to help your body break down acetaldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol metabolism. Myrkl contains prebiotics, probiotics, the amino acid L-cysteine, and vitamin B12 to supposedly help your body process alcohol and reduce post-drinking fatigue. Capsulyte Pregame contains dihydromyricetin (DHM), a flavonoid found in many plants, as well as milk thistle extract, polyphenols, and n-acetyl cysteine (NAC), a precursor to the antioxidant glutathione, to help reduce the effects of alcohol on your body, the company claims. And WaterBoy’s Weekend Recovery and DripDrop’s Electrolyte Powder Packets contain electrolytes (such as potassium, magnesium, and sodium) to help you stay hydrated.
Testimonials about their benefits are abundant, but scientific evidence supporting their purported perks is scant. “The gold standard of effectiveness is the controlled, double-blind clinical trial—none of these have that standard of proof,” says Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior and public health at Brown University who has conducted clinical and laboratory research on the pharmacological treatment of alcohol and drug abuse and dependence. Some of these products target dehydration, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re effective for preventing hangovers, Swift adds.
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A small 2022 study, which was funded by Myrkl’s parent company DeFaire Medical AB, found that after 24 people took the supplements twice a day for a week, less alcohol was absorbed into their bodies after drinking, leading to a 70% reduction in blood alcohol levels when they did have a drink. However, there was no difference in a cognitive function test among people who did or did not take the supplement before drinking alcohol—and the study didn’t specifically address hangover symptoms.
In a 2022 review of 21 placebo-controlled randomized trials that tested a broad swath of purported hangover-prevention ingredients, researchers concluded “only very low quality evidence of efficacy is available to recommend any pharmacologically active intervention for the treatment or prevention of alcohol-induced hangover.”
What causes hangovers—and can these products really do anything about it?
Hangovers are typically brought on by a combination of several factors. For one thing, drinking alcohol can lead to dehydration, as well as electrolyte imbalances. “Alcohol is a diuretic, so it makes you urinate more,” says Dr. Michael Weaver, medical director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Research on Addiction at UTHealth Houston.
In addition, “alcohol is very pro-inflammatory,” Swift says. This is partly because “alcohol makes the intestines leaky—bacteria in the intestines that produce inflammation can get into the bloodstream and cause inflammation” throughout the body. Inflammation contributes to hangover symptoms like fatigue and headache.
Alcohol consumption can also disturb your sleep, which can exacerbate all of these symptoms. And as the liver breaks down alcohol, a byproduct called acetaldehyde is produced; at high levels, acetaldehyde can cause inflammation as well as nausea, vomiting, headaches, and other hangover symptoms, Swift says.
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Some of the pre-alcohol products address one or more of these various issues. But “most of them are fluids and electrolytes—they provide a fancier way of doing what people should be doing anyway, which is staying hydrated,” says Weaver.
The idea behind including probiotics in some of these products is that, theoretically, ingesting bacteria that contain enzymes that destroy acetaldehyde in the stomach may help prevent hangover symptoms. But even if these probiotics were able to get rid of acetaldehyde in the stomach, “you also have it in the liver and the brain,” Swift notes.
As far as other ingredients go, B vitamins can help people metabolize alcohol, allowing them to “get rid of it a little quicker,” Swift says. And DHM and flavones have anti-inflammatory activity, which could be helpful for dealing with headaches and other inflammatory symptoms.
But, again, existing studies have not robustly proven that the formulations on the market effectively combat hangovers.
The bottom line
While the jury is still out on whether these pre-alcohol products can actually prevent a hangover, there are other concerns related to how they might affect someone’s drinking habits. “For some people, a hangover may provide a natural biological deterrent for heavy drinking,” Swift says. Even if they did work as advertised—and Swift doubts that they do—“eliminating that biological check might not be good for you,” he says.
Indeed, there’s some concern that regular use of these types of products, broadly, could inadvertently promote excessive drinking: A study published in 2023 in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism found that young adults who use over-the-counter hangover remedies—which include a wide array of supplements—tend to have more problematic drinking patterns such as binge drinking.
“The best way to avoid a hangover is not to drink alcohol,” says Weaver. The second-best way? “If you’re going to drink, don’t just drink alcohol—drink other things besides alcohol, such as water or non-sugary beverages, and alternate alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic drinks.”
To prevent a hangover, it’s also smart to slow your body’s absorption of alcohol by eating a meal or substantial snack before you drink. In other words, Weaver says, heed the advice you knew about long before products like these hit the market: “Don’t drink on an empty stomach.”
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