Hangover cures from around the world, from hair of the dog to eye of the sheep or a bowl of soup, and a fix for Asian flush
- If you wake up with a dreaded hangover, remedies from around the world range from more alcohol to a bowl of soup, raw eggs or pickles
- More extreme remedies include Mongolian pickled sheep eye and the ‘love it or hate it’ Marmite on toast; Hongkongers can head off Asian flush with a supplement
The French wake up with a mouthful of wood; to Swedes it’s a smack from behind, and Central Americans feel like they’re made of rubber. Chinese and Koreans complain of being overnight drunk, the Japanese suffer from futsukayo – literally two days drunk – while the Danes liken the pounding pain to having carpenters in the forehead.
No one has come up with a foolproof cure for a hangover. The best we can hope to do with the festive season upon us is alleviate the symptoms with an assortment of folk remedies, pseudoscientific quackery and “I swear it works for me” solutions. Here are some of the world’s most popular, and most unusual, hangover cures.
The room is still spinning, your head is thumping and no amount of water seems to ease the pain. What you need, according to those who claim to know, is another drink.
A hair of the dog, also known as guzzling even more of what laid you low in the first place, might sound counterintuitive but anecdotal evidence suggests it works, if only by delaying the dreaded symptoms for a few hours.
The Japanese refer to this approach as mukaizake, a “morning drink to get rid of a hangover”, while in Denmark they opt for a reparationsbajer, or a “recovery beer”.
Another much-loved morning-after livener is a Bloody Mary cocktail, made with vodka, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce. Antioxidant-rich tomatoes are a tried and tested way of relieving alcohol-induced agony in many parts of the world.