Dissolved Oxygen Possible Key to Hangover-free Alcohol

If you really want to avoid the morning headache, sour stomach, and sense that there's a musty wool sweater on your tongue that can follow an evening of imbibing, of course the best course of action is to be moderate when it comes to alcohol consumption. Including plenty of water and food in your evening plan helps as well.

But as reported by Science Daily, a research team in South Korea has found that a modest adjustment to the chemistry of the beverage can make a big difference in how quickly our bodies can metabolize the stuff. This could mean waking up without that nasty hangover.

The benefits hinge on the matter of dissolved oxygen content contained in the beverage. The two step metabolism of alcohol, first to acetaldehyde and then in turn to water and carbon dioxide, require oxygen delivered from breathing, through the stomach, and even absorbed through the skin. Medical researchers at Chungnam National University in South Korea performed a series of experiments using beverages containing 19.5% alcohol but with levels of dissolved oxygen at 8 parts per million (ppm), 20 ppm, and 25 ppm. The results indicated that as the amount of oxygen contained in the beverage increased, the faster the body was found able to process it, and the faster the individual returned to 0.000 percent blood alcohol content (BAC).

Study co-author Kwang-il Kwon, whose findings appear in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, explains to Science Daily the potential benefits to the modest adjustment to the level of dissolved gases in our cocktail:

"The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."

Photo by TriggerHappyDave via Flickr.