Apple cider vinegar is thought to offer many benefits including lowering blood pressure, improving heart health, and encouraging weight loss. In addition to those benefits, some people believe that apple cider vinegar is a hangover cure.
Did you take too many shots last night and are looking for a quick solution for your hangover? The Hangover Hospital in Key West, Florida can help you with a 45-minute IV hangover relief. Call us at 305.912.4911.
Here, we take a look at what apple cider vinegar is, and whether the apple cider vinegar hangover cure works.
What is Apple Cider Vinegar?
Apple cider vinegar or ACV is gotten from the fermentation of apple juice. Here’s how the process occurs:
- Yeast is added to apple juice to break down the sugar into alcohol
- Bacteria are added to the mixture, breaking down the alcohol into acetic acid
The acetic acid is what forms vinegar. Thus, ACV is vinegar sourced from the sugar in apples.
How Can You Use Apple Cider Vinegar to Cure a Hangover?
People who use apple cider vinegar as a hangover cure usually take 2-3 tablespoons of it when they wake up. However, you should note that ACV doesn’t taste nice at all. It has a sour, acidic taste when taken straight. As a result, some people mix the vinegar with a glass of water to make it more palatable.
Does Apple Cider Vinegar Cure Hangovers?
Currently, no scientific studies show a link between apple cider vinegar and curing hangovers. However, plenty of blogs claim that ACV does help to cure hangovers.
Nevertheless, to know whether the vinegar helps with hangovers, let’s first understand how hangovers affect the body in the first place.
When you consume alcohol, it’s broken down by the liver, releasing a toxic by-product called acetaldehyde. The by-product is then broken down further to form acetic acid. As seen earlier, apple cider vinegar is acetic acid. Therefore, it’s essentially among the end products of the metabolism of alcohol.
Most of the hangover symptoms result from the accumulation of acetaldehyde. It’s a highly reactive substance that damages any cells it touches.
The liver can only break down the acetaldehyde to acetic acid at a specific rate (typically equal to one drink per hour). So, any additional drinks per hour will result in a backlog of acetaldehyde, causing havoc on your system. When that occurs, antioxidants come into play and neutralize acetaldehyde before it inflicts excessive damage.
Now that we’ve known how hangovers happen, let’s go back to the question, does apple cider cure hangovers? Unfortunately, no scientific research proves the fact, as ACV is basically the same as the final product of alcohol metabolism.
Are There Any Side Effects of Taking the Apple Cider Vinegar Hangover Cure?
Drinking alcohol increases the production of stomach acid. That is because the alcohol is perceived to activate the acid-producing cells in the lining of the stomach. Therefore, alcohol can usually bring a feeling of nausea with indigestion. ACV is an acid, so it can further acidify the stomach contents and make the symptoms worse.
Final Words
Currently, the evidence of apple cider vinegar being a hangover cure is very limited. If you’re not willing to take a chance on ACV, the Hangover Hospital is here to help.