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Hangover Cures Hit Social Media Just In Time For St. Patrick’s Day

By Roz Zurko
Published on: 09:47 PST, Mar 17, 2017

Many employers don’t have to worry about the flood of sick calls they get the day after St. Patrick’s Day this year since the Irish holiday falls on a Friday. With many employees having Saturday and Sunday off, they can nurse their St. Patrick’s Day hangover without missing work.

The day after St. Patrick’s Day is the second most popular day of the year for calling in sick. It is second only to “the opening days of March Madness, according to National Payday. Despite folks having free time to combat that hangover this year, most don’t want to go through it if they don’t have to. That is why the search for “hangover cures” tends to trend the day after holidays that are known for overindulging in spirits. Some reported hangover cures, like the offering below, look so unappetizing that getting it down may be worse than the hangover itself.

According to 630ched, Google trends expert Alexandra Hunnings reports that the day after St. Patrick’s Day this year, people are expected to take to Google to search “hangover cures.” Since Hunnings zeroes in on Canada’s trends, she cites how the most searches that are done for “handover cures” in Canada come from people who live in Manitoba followed by Alberta and then Saskatchewan.

Some experts say that there is only one cure for a hangover besides not drinking at all and that is time. John McNeill, who is with the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia, claims that time is the cure to the hangover and it takes about 24 hours before its gone or at least renders you feeling a lot better.

Everyone knows that to avoid a hangover, you just don’t drink, but there are ways of lessening your chances if you are going to drink. The first of course is drink moderately, putting long spaces between ordering your drinks over the hours that you are in that party mode. Some people drink water along with their alcoholic beverage to make it last longer and space out ordering their drinks. It also helps in keeping them hydrated.

Studies indicate that you can lessen your chances of that hangover or at least lessen the severity of a hangover by what alcoholic beverage you choose as your poison. Vodka and gin are two of the liquors that contain less congeners and these two liquors are associated with lowering the incidence of a hangover. Liquors that are higher in congeners, like whiskey, brandy, and red wine offer more of a risk of contracting a hangover. Of course if you overindulge in any alcoholic beverage, you are in line for a hangover, but responsible drinking could keep the next-day symptoms at a minimum.

Enough of avoidance — chances are if you landed on this page you want a cure, and the time for avoidance of a hangover has long since passed. Back in 2013 the soda Sprite was deemed by science as the best hangover cure yet, which is documented in an article from the Huffington Post back from that time.

It was a group of Chinese researchers from Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou who made the claim that Sprite was a drink that had the most impact on a person’s metabolism after the effects of alcohol on their system. The researchers did this after looking at the different non-alcoholic beverages available today to see which drink impacted the activity of ADH and ALDH in your system. The alcohol that you drink metabolizes into ADH and ALDH which causes the symptoms of a hangover.

Sprite was the beverage that did the trick, according to the researchers. This research also showed that there were drinks that were “terrible” for a hangover, like a herbal infusion with hemp. All this did was make it worse by boosting the ADH and inhibiting the ALDH, keeping the hangover going.

There was a lot of buzz about using Sprite as a hangover cure back then, but you don’t seem to hear too much about it today. Some swear by Pedialyte, which is a drink given to children of all ages for re-hydration after a bout with diarrhea or vomiting. Back in 2015 it was deemed as a drink that could help with the symptoms, but it wasn’t really a cure for a hangover, as reported in Cosmopolitan Magazine back then. Some still use it today as their “go-to” hangover cure.

There is a new buzz online today about curing that hangover that is coming from a product sold just for this condition, Blowfish. This product is an FDA-regulated hangover cure, according to their ads and banners online.

According to Adweek, Blowfish has embarked on a new campaign with their ads showing some interesting ways one might feel when experiencing a hangover. The ads show a woman with a toilet bowl over her head, another woman with her head in a vice, and still another woman drooping her body into a steaming hot cup of coffee.

Blowfish does give equal time to the men with a hangover as well, with one at a work station besieged by an octopus wrapped around his head. They also have a man who is laying face-down on the floor suffering from a hangover. They offer up descriptions like, “For when you wish you were dead, but still have to go to work,” and “For when you are medically alive, but mentally dead.” Apparently these are some of the ways folks feel in the gripes of a hangover.

The people from Blowfish are trying to get the full effect of a hangover just in time for Saturday, the day after St. Patrick’s Day. According to Adweek, this hangover cure that is seen across the online world today is described as “a fizzy remedy.” The Blowfish website describes what happens after taking this drug. They write, “effervescent solution quickly delivers maximum-strength pain reliever and pharmaceutical-grade caffeine to your system.”

This remedy allows you to pop a few tabs and go on your merry way, or so the Blowfish people promise. This just goes to show you that hangovers are big business today and it looks like Blowfish is very aware of this as they just revamped their advertising campaign in time for St. Patrick’s Day. As Adweek suggests, “Blowfish goes big on a big weekend.”

[Featured Image by John McConnico/AP Images]

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