A hangover is an “illness”; court in Frankfurt, Germany rules

A self-induced one perhaps? A court in Germany has officially ruled that hangovers resulting from too much alcohol consumption are classified as an “illness”.

The ruling came just days after Munich kicked off its annual beer festival known around the world as Oktoberfest. The case leading up to the ruling was against a firm selling “shots” and powder drink mixes that cure hangovers. Plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit claimed that the firm was making false and illegal health claims. Judges in the city of Frankfurt ultimately ruled in favor of the defendants.

“Information about a food product cannot ascribe any properties for preventing, treating or healing a human illness or give the impression of such a property,” Germany’s superior regional court ruling said on Monday as per The Guardian.

“By an illness, one should understand even small or temporary disruptions to the normal state or normal activity of the body,” the verdict added. This includes nausea, headaches, and exhaustion that the defendants claimed its products could cure.

Judges assigned to the case noted that medical practitioners have long used a special medical term for the morning after the night before, “veisalgia”.

The Guardian further reports that German and British scientist found in February that the order of drinking does not affect the intensity of a drinker’s hangover. The research, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no link between the order of consumed alcohol and “hangover intensity”. 90 people volunteered for the study and the results showed about one in ten threw up due to intoxication.