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Cactus offers help for hangovers

CHICAGO - An extract of prickly pear cactus may help prevent hangover symptoms such as dry mouth and nausea, scientists have found.

Unlike folk remedies like eating a greasy breakfast, the extract seems to help forestall symptoms rather than relieve them.

Dr. Jeff Wiese of Tulane University in New Orleans and his colleagues randomly assigned 55 young adults to either take the extract or a placebo.

All of the volunteers then ate a fast-food dinner. Four hours later, they started drinking either:

• Vodka.
  
• Gin.
  
• Rum.
  
• Bourbon.
  
• Scotch.
  
• Tequila.
  

The volunteers, aged 21 to 35, drank up to 1.75 grams of alcohol per kilogram of body mass, an amount that produced hangovers in previous studies.

Drunken study participants were driven home. The next morning, they ranked nine symptoms of hangover severity. A week later, the experiment was repeated with the two groups trading places.

The extract showed statistically significant improvements in nausea, lack of appetite, and dry mouth but Wiese's team did not measure if it helped the foggy-headed feeling common in hangover sufferers.

"In this randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial, we found hangover symptom severity to be moderately reduced by an extract of the prickly pear plant, Opuntia ficus indica," the researchers wrote in Monday's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The researchers also measured levels of C-reactive protein, which is thought to be involved in inflammation and hangovers.

They found those who took the extract had 40 per cent less C-reactive protein in their bloodstreams compared to those who took a placebo.

The research was funded by the U.S. government and a nutritional supplement company that markets a form of the extract.

Posted by thinkum at June 30, 2004 12:52 PM