South Korea's New Hangover Cure: An Ice Cream Bar Made With Juice From The Ancient Raisin Fruit Tree 



Hangovers are a lingering morning-after reminder of that extra shot you probably shouldn’t have taken the night before. But thankfully, South Korea, Asia’s biggest alcohol consumer per capita — has invented a sweet hangover cure. South Korean convenience store chain Withme FS has released the first ever ice cream hangover cure, adding yet another product to a $126 billion-dollar industry that includes hangover pills and drinks.

The ice cream bar, dubbed “Gyeondyo-bar,” which translates as “hang in there,” was designed to alleviate hangover symptoms for all the South Korean employees who have to survive work the day after drinking. Alcohol consumption in the ｃountry leads to nearly $8 billion in lost productivity.

“[The name] expresses the hardships of employees who have to suffer a working day after heavy drinking, as well as to provide comfort to those who have to come to work early after frequent nights of drinking,” Withme FS said in a statement to Reuters.

The grapefruit-flavored ice cream bar works thanks to a small amount of oriental raisin tree fruit juice. This fruit juice has been used as a Korean hangover treatment since the 1600s, and is even listed in some medical texts. However, until now it had only been served in soups rather than in ice cream form.

The juice’s ability to stop hangovers lies in dihydromyricetin (DHM). This chemical and its power caught the attention of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012, who were interested in seeing how it worked. But in addition to curing hangovers, they also discovered its potential for breaking the cycle of alcohol addiction. Their study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, revealed in a series of experiments that DHM worked to block intoxication in drunk lab rats.

“DHM will reduce the degree of drunkenness for the amount of alcohol drunk and will definitely reduce the hangover symptoms,” said the study’s lead researcher Jing Liang, a pharmacologist at UCLA. “In time, it will reduce their desire for alcohol.”

Liang tested the rats’ coordination and levels of clumsiness by injecting them with a dose of alcohol equal to that of an adult who drinks 15 to 20 beers over two hours. Seventy minutes later, she injected the rats with a milligram of DHM. It only took five minutes for the rats to recover and find composure, leading Liang and her team to conclude that DHM was able to stop the clumsiness and loss of coordination caused by drinking too much.

The rats were retested with alcohol injections but this time some of them were left alone to experience a hangover. All of them were placed in a maze, and the researchers found that those forced to recover without DHM stayed in the corner of the maze and did not attempt to work their way through it. The rats that were given DHM behaved normally, however, and explored various corridors to eventually make it through. In fact, they acted as if they were given no alcohol at all. Researchers said the DHM acted like a drug, capable of blocking alcohol from receptors in the brain and ultimately preventing drunkenness.

Because the new ice cream bar utilizes the same active ingredient as the oriental raisin fruit tree, there’s a good chance it’ll help curb the hangovers of those with a sweet tooth. With local demand already high, Withme FS has already expressed plans to export its remedy worldwide.

Article Source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/hangover-cure-south-korea-ice-cream-active-ingredient-387828
Image Source: http://images.medicaldaily.com/sites/medicaldaily.com/files/styles/headline/public/2016/05/26/ice-cream-bar.jpg

VOCABULARY WORDS:
1. Lingering (adj.) ~ lasting for a long time or slow to end
2. Alleviate (v.) ~ make (suffering, deficiency, or a problem) less severe
3. Hardship (n.) ~ severe suffering or privation
4. Clumsiness (n.) ~ the quality of being awkward or careless in one's movements
5. Curb (v.) ~ restrain or keep in check

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. What is the main ingredient of the ice cream that helps alleviate hangover?
2. Have you ever tried it? Is yes, how effective is it? If no, would you like to try it?
3. How does drinking and hangover affect work productivity?
4. According to the article, what are the other possible effects of dihydromyricetin (DHM) to the body?