A recent German court ruling declared that hangovers are an 'illness'. The judgement came days after the annual Oktoberfest beer festival began in Munich. The German law prohibits food or drinking items to be marked as 'able to prevent' or 'treat any health problem', and an unnamed company which sells anti-hungover shots and powder was taken to court for making unlawful claims about its products. The superior regional court's ruling allegedly claimed that the information about a food product cannot ascribe any properties for preventing, treating or healing a human illness or give the impression of such property. It further added that by an illness, one should understand even small or temporary disruptions to the normal state or normal activity of the body. 

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'Illness under the law'

The court concluded that as the symptoms of being hungover are tiredness, nausea and headache, and is usually experienced after consuming alcohol. The court, therefore, reported that hangovers disrupt the body system and are seen as an illness under the law. Judges reportedly also noted the fact that doctors in earlier times used the term 'veisalgia' as a medical term for hangover.  According to reports, in 2018 millions of visitors consumed approximately seven million litres of beer. The consumption of beer has been observed to have fallen since 1970, whereas sales of alcohol-free beers have reportedly risen. Researchers in Germany reportedly plied approximately 90 volunteers with beer and wine to find out whether hangovers were worsened by the order in which drinks were consumed but the results reportedly showed that the ordered drinks that were consumed had no impact on hangover intensity. Earlier this year according to Germany and Britain scientists, the order in which the drinks were consumed has no effect on the magnitude of one's hungover. 

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Bizzare case

In an unrelated incident, earlier in 2019, a Vietnamese doctor in a hospital pumped five litres of beer into a patient's stomach, suffering from alcohol poisoning. Nguyen Van Nhat, 48 years old suffered from alcohol poisoning, and the doctors found that his methanol level was 1,119 times higher than normal. That means, the hospital's head of the Intensive Care Unit, Dr Le Van Lam said that his body was trying to process too much alcohol at once. To decelerate his liver from processing methanol, a team of medical staff transfused on a litre of beer into his stomach and then continued to pump one can of beer every hour. After the doctor finally pumped 15 cans or five litres of beer in his body, he gained consciousness.

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