We've all experienced the throbbing headache, disorientation, nausea and upset stomach that comes after a night of drinking too much.
Over the years, a variety of home remedies have been suggested to cure the dreaded hangover, from pickle juice and fried eggs to the controversial “hangover pill.”
But the real secret to relieving those unpleasant symptoms may actually be hiding in your fruit bowl.
Research suggests fruit could be the miracle hangover cure we've all been waiting for, with experts finding that the tasty plant-based snack can reduce hangover symptoms by a whopping 50%.
The health benefits are thought to be due to fructose, a natural sugar found in fruit, which significantly increases the body's ability to eliminate alcohol, allowing you to cut your alcohol intake by almost half, reports the Daily Mail.
Nutritionist Dr Rhonda Patrick discussed these findings in a recent podcast, explaining that eating fruit like grapes, watermelon or bananas before hitting the town can reduce the amount of alcohol in your blood, making your hangover less severe the next day.
Drinking alcohol depletes your body of essential nutrients and leaves you with a nasty hangover, but an unconventional solution may be just around the corner: fruit. But not just any type of fruit will do the trick, just fruit itself, not fruit juice.
A new study suggests that eating fruit the night after drinking alcohol may help you recover faster by replacing salt lost overnight and rehydrating you.
According to Gloucestershire Live, this is because the sugar (fructose) in fruit helps the body metabolise alcohol more quickly.
However, this doesn't mean stocking up on a box of Tropicana from your local Tesco, as the sugar in fruit juice can cause sudden fluctuations in blood sugar levels.
Eating whole fruit helps ensure that sugars are absorbed steadily, preventing unnecessary spikes in blood sugar levels.
If you're interested in giving this fruit remedy a try, Dr Patrick recommends eating plenty of fruit: consuming about one gram of fructose per kilogram of body weight can reduce hangover symptoms by a whopping 31 percent.
For example, if you weigh about 150 lbs, you would need to eat about 5-6 apples to hit your fructose sweet spot.
While it may sound appealing, we don't recommend replacing your full English breakfast any time soon. Dr Patrick reiterates on the FoundMyFitness podcast: “Am I saying fructose is a hangover cure? No. But it's an interesting mechanism by which food, particularly fruit, may reduce the negative effects of alcohol.”
“It's important to note that fructose from whole fruit, with its fiber and micronutrient benefits, is very different from the highly refined fructose that comes from fruit juice.”
In one interesting study highlighted by nutrition experts, researchers delving into metabolic disorders looked at 45 healthy men aged between 25 and 35 to see how fructose affected the body's ability to process alcohol.
Before the experiment began, participants considered themselves to be light drinkers. For every gram of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, they were given the same amount of fructose, but crucially, this did not come from fruit itself.
The results were surprising: fructose significantly reduced the duration of intoxication by around 30.7% and also accelerated the elimination of alcohol from the body by around 44.7%.
Commenting on the findings, Dr Patrick said: “Eating fruit with a meal before drinking alcohol may help reduce the negative effects of alcohol consumption. Another possibility is mixing alcohol with fruit juice, which contains fructose.”
However, Dr Patrick warned that while this method may improve alcohol metabolism, combining alcohol and fructose can lead to a greater spike in blood sugar and triglyceride levels than consuming each separately.
