Morning Recovery: the miracle cure for a hangover?

Everyone has their own personal hangover cure for the morning after the ‘big night out’ which they swear helps them recover quicker than anything. A bottle of Lucozade works for some, although others chug down a few espressos to march through the day’s lectures. Wolfing down a big greasy fry up is also a popular choice, although chances are you can’t stand the sight of food just yet. My personal favourite is orange juice and water, but I wouldn’t recommend it after a pitcher of Eliminator or two. There are of course those who just “don’t get hangovers”. You all suck and I hate you.

For those of us who tend to suffer the morning after a drink or two (or more likely ten), an ex-Tesla engineer may be offering us all salvation. Sisun Lee’s new company, Morning Recovery, has created a miracle hangover cure drink based mostly on naturally occurring herbs. The drink is inspired by his experiences partying in South Korea, where his friends gave him a herb-based drink in the morning to help his recovery from the previous night’s sesh. Soon after he claims he was barely feeling the effects of the hangover anymore.

Sisun Lee’s new company, Morning Recovery, has created a miracle hangover cure drink based mostly on naturally occurring herbs…

Fascinated by the drink, he looked for similar cures back in America but none were readily available, while Asian companies were reluctant to have someone with zero experience in food and drinks as their distributor. Using previous research, Lee concocted his own recipe for the drink, which took inspiration from the thousand year old Asian ingredients while remaining completely FDA compliant.

I’ve tried herbal hangover cures before, and pretty much none of them have made any significant difference, but Lee’s drink is based on research by Dr. Jing Liang conducted at UCLA. So how does the miracle drink actually work? When we drink alcohol, acetaldehyde, a type of toxic acid, builds in our stomach which can cause headaches or vomiting if you drink too quickly. Morning Recovery is based around the Hovenia Dulcis, an Oriental raisin tree, which contains dihydromyricetine (DHM). This aids in recovery by accelerating the breakdown of acetaldehyde into fairly harmless acetic acid, which can then be flushed from the body safely.

When we drink alcohol, acetaldehyde, a type of toxic acid, builds in our stomach which can cause headaches or vomiting if you drink too quickly…

Alcohol consumption also causes increased production of gamma-aminobutyric-Acid (GABA) by binding to GABA receptors in the brain, which in turn blocks production of glutamate, an excitory neurotransmitter which increases brain activity. DHM binds to GABA receptors and somewhat blocks the impacts of alcohol on the brain. Morning Recovery also contains Vitamins B, C and electrolytes, all of which are lost from drinking alcohol. They have a crowd-funding campaign which launched on 5^th July, offering the public large discounts to help fund the product.  Whether it actually works for the majority of people remains to be seen. I for one can’t wait to try it out!