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When people experience a hangover due to too much alcohol intake the hours before, sometimes they are offered a good cup of coffee (at least in my country), not as the only or the main "treatment", but as a helping element in such a condition.

Is there any scientific evidence for this?

3 Answers 3

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No. Coffee is often offered to people perhaps about to pass out so that they will stay awake long enough that they can be kicked out of an establishment.

Alcohol causes dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and taxes the liver. To this extent standard medical treatment is fluid, electrolytes, and vitamins. Caffeine is never used in a medical setting to treat alcohol overdose or withdrawal.

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A hangover is the body reacting to being poisoned. Coffee, like any other liquid you might drink, will help with the dehydration. If your drunkenness has caused you to sleep in, and you normally drink coffee every morning, your headache may be worsened or partially caused by caffeine withdrawal, so a cup of coffee will improve that. And if you're feeling queasy, and take cream and sugar in your coffee, it's a way to boost your energy a bit without eating solid food.

But orange juice, tea, pop, or many other drinks would do the same, with the possible exception of the caffeine depending what drink you choose.

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You can check Alcohol Hangover.

It has a section on treatments for a hangover which is very useful in case you were unaware of some of those "tricks". It also tells you what alcohol types correspond to certain hangover levels (e.g. wine vs. vodka).

To answer your question, they mention that there is no scientific evidence that coffee aids in such a situation. As already mentioned, coffee is not what you want to drink if you are dehydrated so I'd doubt that it helps. Also, if you look into hangover literature, e.g. Treatment and Prevention of Alcohol Hangover (you should be able to get it for free if you search on google scholar), coffee is rarely even investigated as a possible treatment method.

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