Why we tell you to take Glug after the last drink, not before
Most recovery products want you to take them before you go out. We went the other way. Here's the math behind it.
Most of the big names in this category tell you the same thing: take it before you drink. It's a reasonable instinct. Get ahead of it, right? We looked at it for a long time and ended up somewhere else.
Your liver is on a clock
Your liver clears alcohol at a fairly steady rate, roughly half a standard drink an hour for most adults. Say you have five drinks between 9 p.m. and midnight. By the time you're done, your body has only processed a couple of them. Most of the alcohol, and most of the acetaldehyde it turns into, is still ahead of you, and your liver will be working on it for hours after you fall asleep.
So if you take something at 8 p.m., a lot of it has peaked and faded by the time the real work starts. If you take it at 1 a.m., it overlaps with the part of the night that matters.
What the ingredients want
NAC, one of the main actives, peaks in your blood about an hour after you take it. The human NAC studies that showed any signal gave it during or after drinking. Glycine, which is there for sleep, only makes sense at bedtime. Taken at 8 p.m. it would do its job at the wrong time and be mostly gone by midnight.
The water part works the same way. Alcohol makes you lose fluid while your blood alcohol is rising, so a glass of electrolytes before you go out partly washes straight through. The glass before bed sticks around.
The catch
The catch is remembering. Nobody walks in the door at 1 a.m. thinking about supplements.
Our fix is boring and it works. Before you go out, put a stick on your nightstand next to a glass. That's it. When you get home, it's sitting there and you don't have to remember anything. You just have to not ignore it, and Berry Lemonade makes that easier.
Why not both?
People ask if they can take one before and one after. We don't recommend it. Each stick has 200 mcg of selenium, and two in one night lands right at the adult daily upper limit. One stick at bedtime is the dose.
If you're going to forget one step tonight, make it the 8 p.m. one.
- Coppersmith V, Hudgins S, Stoltzfus J, Stawicki SP. The use of N-acetylcysteine in the prevention of hangover: a randomized trial. Scientific Reports, 2021.
- National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements. Selenium fact sheet for health professionals.
One stick before bed.
500 mg CyLoc® glutathione, NAC, electrolytes and glycine. Berry Lemonade.
