Is this powder really the miracle cure for a hangover?
At the supermarket’s flower counter, I had to wait because the cashier was discussing the previous weekend with a friend. Fairground in town, lots of beer, vague stories – secretly, I was standing there with my bouquet in hand, savoring all the gossip. And her friend also had a great tip: drink ORS for a hangover. Works like a charm, and she was going back to the fairground that evening.
Aha, a new anti-hangover tip? The fairground doesn’t exactly appeal to me, but by now I do know that a hangover when you’re twenty feels like a purring kitten compared with how it feels when you’re a forty-something after a night of heavy drinking. An entire weekend lying horizontally with the remote on your stomach because you ordered a wine pairing on Friday night? Drinking sparkling water all week, no matter how nice the occasion, because you know that otherwise you’ll be slumped over your laptop the next day looking wilted? No, I’m all for a miracle cure to prevent hangovers!
ORS: a miracle cure for a hangover?
ORS stands for Oral Rehydration Salts; sensible people keep it in their travel medicine kit as a remedy for dehydration. If you happen to get severe diarrhea on vacation, or worse: food poisoning, that little powder containing salt and glucose ensures that you don’t also become dehydrated. And isn’t a hangover headache also caused by dehydration? Well then!
Beer and sambuca
Luckily, the television program Radar investigated it, and what do you know? ORS is no miracle cure for a hangover. Glucose and salt do indeed help with dehydration, and they can remedy that dry mouth and tight, sore feeling in your neck. But the other unpleasant symptoms – nausea, dizziness, sleepiness and stickiness – ORS certainly won’t help with. The headache, for example, is caused by other effects of alcohol, says Radar.
Hungover as a branch
Even worse: the anti-hangover pill Zober doesn’t work either, and the television program tested that scientifically. An editor had to drink beer and sambuca on two consecutive evenings, then take one of those pills. In advance, he didn’t know whether he was getting an anti-hangover pill or just a sweetener, a placebo. What do you think? Hungover as a branch. Two nights in a row. Nothing could save him. So that pill did absolutely nothing.
The critical consumer program’s tip for preventing a hangover? Simply drink less. Well, that’s easy for them to say. You know what, we’ll just do that too. But honestly, isn’t this Christmapolitan simply the ideal Christmas cocktail? And then we’ll still drink some ORS afterward. Because colleague Wieke swears by this powder – and believing in it is already half the solution, isn’t it?
