Surprising food that could reduce effects of a hangover by 50%, according to research

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Pickle juice. Fried eggs. Hair of the dog. If you like to party you've probably tried everything to treat the dreaded hangover.

But the antidote could be sitting in your fridge or in a bowl on the kitchen table, according to research: fruit.

Dr Rhonda Patrick, a nutritionist and rising podcaster, cited studies showing that fructose, the sugar that naturally occurs in fruit, can slash the speed at which the body gets rid of alcohol by nearly half. 

Speaking on a recent podcast, she said that eating fruits such as grapes, watermelon, and bananas before a night out can reduce the amount of alcohol in the blood and therefore lessen the hangover the next day. 

And theoretically, eating fruit the morning after could speed up the recovery process by replenishing salts and rehydrating the body. 

The sugar and water in fruit helps rehydrate the body, replenish stores of vitamins and minerals, restore electrolytes, and boost blood glucose levels, helping to mitigate hangovers

But fruit juice may be a poor substitute for whole, fresh produce, Dr Patrick, who hosts the podcast FoundMyFitness, warned. 

When fruit is juiced, the sugars bound up inside the plant cells are released and easily absorbed into the bloodstream, resulting in a blood sugar spike, followed by a crash. 

But the sugars in whole fruit are absorbed at a slower rate, keeping the extreme dips and peaks to a minimum. 

A person would need a lot of fruit to counteract the effects of alcohol, according to the research cited by Dr Patrick.

Eating a gram of fructose for every kilogram of body weight reduced the length of time a person was drunk by about 31 percent. 

For example, a 79 kg man (about 175lbs) would need around the same amount of fructose in grams — the equivalent of around five or six apples. 

Fruit also increased the length of time it took for the body to process and eliminate alcohol by nearly 45 percent, according to a 2009 report that she cited. 

Certain fruits, such as berries and citrus, also contain antioxidants that benefit liver function.

The liver is reponsible for breaking down alcohol, and a healthy liver is able to do this more effectively.  

Dr Patrick said: ‘Am I suggesting that fructose is an anti-hangover remedy? No. But this is an interesting mechanism by which food and fruit, in particular, may lessen some of the adverse effects of alcohol.

‘Note that fructose from whole fruit, with the benefit of its fiber and micronutrients, is vastly different than highly refined fructose from fruit juices.' 

In the study she cited, scientists investigating metabolic disorders tested the effect that fructose has on helping the body clear out alcohol in 45 healthy men aged 25 to 35. 

Fructose either before or after drinking has been shown in studies to help the body metabolize and clear out alcohol faster

Dr Rhonda Patrick has a podcast and health newsletter called FoundMyFitness which provides 'distilled research on topics like fasting, depression, fitness, and longevity'

All of them were light drinkers going into the study, and for each gram of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, they were also given one gram/kilogram of body weight of fructose, though not in whole-fruit form.

Fructose reduced the time people felt drunk by about 30.7 percent, and it helped their bodies get rid of alcohol from the bloodstream faster, speeding up the process by about 44.7 percent.

Alcohol is a toxin that depresses parts of the brain that help make decisions, judge situations, and coordinate our movements and reaction times.

When the body metabolizes alcohol, it produces a toxic compound called acetaldehyde.

Acetaldehyde is the primary contributor to inflammation, dehydration, and oxidative stress, leading to symptoms such as headache, nausea, and fatigue.

The dark circles on the graph represent blood alcohol levels measured every 10 minutes after subjects drank. A second experiment testing the effect of fructose on blood-alcohol content [represented by the open circles] showed that fructose affected the rate at which alcohol was metabolized and cleared from the bloodstream

Dr Patrick said: ‘Eating some fruit with a meal before you drink may help lessen its negative effects and this could also involve mixing alcohol with fruit juice, which also contains fructose.’

At the same time, she added a caveat to choosing fruity cocktails: ‘This improved ability to metabolize alcohol may come at a cost. 

'Consuming alcohol and fructose together actually worsened blood glucose and triglycerides [a type of fat in the blood] when compared to alcohol or fructose alone.’

Another study, published in the South African Journal of Science, tested the effects of consuming a concentrated amount of fructose in a glass of water before and after heavy drinking.

Researchers asked nine volunteer medical students and staff from an alcohol research institution to drink eight drinks of their choice in one hour. 

Thirty minutes after they stopped, the researchers measured their blood alcohol level until it reached zero.

A week later, they repeated the same experiment, except this time, 100g of fructose in water was given 20 minutes after drinking.

Adding fructose to the experiment shortened the time it took to bring blood alcohol content down to below 50 milligrams per 100 milliliters of blood (mg%) - the legal limit in South Africa - by about an hour and ten minutes.

Then, they tested fructose as a hangover preventative. The volunteers took one gram of fructose per kilogram of body weight in water before consuming alcohol equivalent to a double shot of spirits – 50 milliliters – over five minutes.

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After a 10-minute wait to allow alcohol vapors in the mouth to dissipate, breath alcohol measurements were taken until the level of alcohol reached zero.

Two separate times, two volunteers were given 50 milliliters of whiskey, and their blood alcohol levels rose to about 40 mg%, then gradually fell back to zero in about two hours.

Researchers then gave the volunteers fructose before they drank the whiskey. This time, the increase in blood alcohol was notably reduced. 

One participant showed no detectable blood alcohol, suggesting that either the alcohol was metabolized very rapidly or the fructose influenced alcohol metabolism so that it was not detectable in the blood at the time of measurement.

This also suggests that the fructose intervention may have quelled any potential hangovers. 

The moderating effect on blood alcohol levels persisted in the second subject even when they were given another 50 ml of whisky three hours later.