About Us
While most companies will try to "cure" your hangover after the fact, our bar helps prevent any hangover effects in the first place. Eaten before or while drinking, the ingredients in the bar help combat the toxins from alcohol that make your mornings rough. The Pre-Bar Bar is a delicious way to start your night off right and start your next day strong.
Where it Began
The Pre-Bar Bar started off as an idea for a beverage that you drank before going out. Putting turmeric and pepper in a drink turned out to taste terrible, so in our founders college kitchen in Gainesville, Florida, The Pre-Bar Bar was born in 2021.
After months of making the bar in that kitchen behind Midtown and selling hundreds of bars, refining the taste and optimizing the effect, the recipe was taken to our manufacturer, YouBar. After being FDA approved, packaging designed, and going out drinking in the name of testing prototypes countless times, the product finally made it to Amazon.
How It Works
The Science
There are two key ingredients in The Pre-Bar Bar that allow it to successfully prevent your hangover: turmeric and pepper.
Turmeric contains curcumin, which is what really does the heavy lifting in helping with your hangover. The pepper increases the bio-availability of the curcumin, essentially allowing it to get where it needs to go in your body.
When your body breaks down alcohol, it produces acetaldehyde, a chemical that itself is 10-30 times more toxic than alcohol. When curcumin is available in your body, the levels of acetaldehyde drop, but curcumin is not absorbed very well by your body. That's where the pepper comes in — a compound in pepper called piperine increases the bio-availability of curcumin by 2000%. Together, these two compounds, along with our perfectly balanced combination of ingredients, break down acetaldehyde and help lessen the chances of a nasty hangover.
Preventing a Hangover
Watch this video to help learn the science behind the bar.
For those of you who are looking for a more in-depth explanation, you can start with this study, Innovative Preparation of Curcumin for Improved Oral Bioavailability (1).
This study out of Japan investigated the bioavailability and effects of a new curcumin preparation called THERACURMIN, with promising implications for hangover prevention.
Curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, has long been recognized for its health benefits. However, its poor oral bioavailability has limited its therapeutic efficiency. THERACURMIN, a highly absorptive curcumin dispersed with colloidal nanoparticles, showed significantly improved oral bioavailability compared to curcumin powder in both rats and human subjects.
The study also found that THERACURMIN exhibited the ability to reduce the concentration of acetaldehyde in the blood. Acetaldehyde is a by-product of your body breaking down alcohol and is actually 20-30 times more toxic than alcohol itself, and is one of the largest reasons why you feel hungover after drinking.
These findings suggest that THERACURMIN, with its enhanced bioavailability and potential to reduce alcohol-related discomfort, can be a valuable tool in preventing hangovers and supporting overall well-being.
THERACURMIN however, is "a highly absorptive curcumin dispersed with colloidal nano-particles," and not something that is easily manufactured. The study below will explain how we use black pepper to replicate the increased bioavailability of THERACURMIN.
The previous study points out a very important finding, that increased bioavailability of curcumin, which is the active ingredient in turmeric, can reduce the concentration of acetaldehyde in the blood.
The next study Influence of piperine on the pharmacokinetics of curcumin in animals and human volunteers (2), explains how that same increased bioavailability can be achieved with regular turmeric and black pepper.
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The study investigated the influence of piperine, a compound found in black pepper, on the pharmacokinetics of curcumin in animals and human volunteers. Curcumin has poor bioavailability due to rapid metabolism in the liver and intestinal wall. Meaning it cannot normally produce the intended effect of preventing your hangover.
In humans, curcumin alone resulted in low or undetectable serum levels, while the addition of piperine significantly increased the concentrations, with a bioavailability increase of 2000%.
The study suggests that piperine enhances the absorption and bioavailability of curcumin in both rats and humans without adverse effects.
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With pepper and turmeric together, the curcumin available to your body is increased manyfold. The curcumin is then able to reduce the concentration of acetaldehyde in your body and help prevent your hangover.
A final study, Therapeutic Roles of Curcumin: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials (3), details the vast health benefits of turmeric, which as an anti-inflammatory has incredible effects observed on patients with pro-inflammatory diseases. This study can also be read in its entirety for free unlike the previous two.
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The abstract reads " Some promising effects have been observed in patients with various pro-inflammatory diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, uveitis, ulcerative proctitis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel disease, tropical pancreatitis, peptic ulcer, gastric ulcer, idiopathic orbital inflammatory pseudotumor, oral lichen planus, gastric inflammation, vitiligo, psoriasis, acute coronary syndrome, atherosclerosis, diabetes, diabetic nephropathy, diabetic microangiopathy, lupus nephritis, renal conditions, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, β-thalassemia, biliary dyskinesia, Dejerine-Sottas disease, cholecystitis, and chronic bacterial prostatitis. Curcumin has also shown protection against hepatic conditions, chronic arsenic exposure, and alcohol intoxication."
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One of the most interesting findings from the study was that in participants 40-60 years old "Curcumin, but not placebo, produced decrease in salivary amylase and in the plasma levels of triglycerides, beta amyloid, alanine amino transferase, and sICAM. Furthermore, curcumin administration in these participants increased salivary radical scavenging capacities and activities in plasma catalase, myeloperoxidase, and nitric oxide production. Overall, these results demonstrated the health-promoting effects of lipidated curcumin in healthy middle aged people."
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Turmeric has been studied and in many cases found to aid with various pro-inflammatory diseases which are listed above, and the study notes, in agreement with the previous two, that Turmeric and its active ingredient curcumin has poor bioavailability on its own, but increases by 2000% with the combination of pepper to increase the health benefits.
1 Shoba, Guido, et al. “Influence of Piperine on the Pharmacokinetics of Curcumin in Animals and Human Volunteers.” Planta Medica, vol. 64, no. 04, 1998, pp. 353–356, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21532153/.
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2 Shoba, Guido, et al. “Influence of Piperine on the Pharmacokinetics of Curcumin in Animals and Human Volunteers.” Planta Medica, vol. 64, no. 04, 1998, pp. 353–356, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9619120/.
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3 Gupta, Subash C., et al. “Therapeutic Roles of Curcumin: Lessons Learned From Clinical Trials.” The AAPS Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, 2012, pp. 195–218, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3535097/.