The hangover has been with us forever, it seems. Several years ago a freshly deciphered Egyptian papyrus revealed that even 1,900 years ago, cures for the after-effects of consuming too much alcohol were on people’s minds – the recommended option in this case being a necklace made out of the leatherleaf plant.

Various other treatments suggested by folklore include a breakfast of pickled herrings, a fried canary (thanks, Romans), salty plums, and the Prairie Oyster, an American concoction consisting of raw eggs, tomato juice, hot sauce, and other fixings. Anything that might cure the pounding headache, nausea, fatigue, and disorientation that characterize the hangover has been tried.

However, very little, other than the tincture of time, seems to work. One difficulty in designing a hangover treatment is that exactly what a hangover is, when it comes down molecular biology, is still not clearly known. Intriguingly, hangover symptoms don’t occur until the alcohol has already left our blood.

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That suggests that metabolites made when our bodies break it down may be involved. Ethanol is degraded by liver enzymes into acetaldehyde, and then further broken down into acetate, which turns into fatty acids and water. Some scientists have speculated that acetaldehyde may cause some hangover symptoms, especially given evidence that drunkenness occurs more quickly in people with mutations that hamper the enzymes that remove it. But some studies suggest that acetaldehyde levels don’t correlate with hangover severity.