Leonard Grossman, M.D., a New York plastic surgeon received a distress call one morning that lead to a breakthrough in hangover prevention and remedy.
“I have a friend whose son decided to celebrate the night before but overdid the alcohol intake and was quite ill,” Dr. Grossman said. “I told him to come in the office where I infused him with fluids, minerals and vitamins.”
It did the trick.
A week or two later his grateful patient called with an idea: Why not invent some kind of patch that does the work of an infusion without having to swallow a pill? Patches work for motion sickness, nicotine abatement, pain, and a treatment for memory decline in Alzheimer’s patients. Why not hangover prevention?
Dr. Grossman began to learn more about treatment of hangovers and began to develop the idea of using prevention as a treatment in a patch form. (The traditional remedy was just to sleep it off and pray.) They found a company that manufactured patches and Bytox was born.
“Basically the patch is a delivery system,” he said. “Only an intravenous stuck in your arm could be more effective than the Bytox patch. It penetrates through the skin and works with the network of small capillaries. Unlike pain relievers, the patch delivers a constant flow of nine vitamins, folic acid and Acai berry and won’t upset your stomach.”
The patch is active for 18 to 24 hours and retails for around $2.99. Stick the patch on an arm 45 minutes before that first drink and leave it on eight hours after you stop drinking. Although the vitamin dosage is very high, it is harmless because it washes out of your system.
“The patch is for the educated drinker who doesn’t want to feel the pain the next day,” he said. “Just remember it’s like an air bag in a car and another thing – too much of anything, namely alcohol, can become a poison.”