You have to bear with a sore head

★ IT’S official – you’re not just hungover after that big night out, you’re actually ill.

A court in Frankfurt has ruled that the unpleasant symptoms of over-indulging are a “disruption of the body’s normal condition” and can be counted as a real illness.

★ NADINE LINGE reveals 15 other head-pounding facts about hangovers…

1 No one really knows why we get hangovers. Some say it’s down to dehydration, while others insist alcohol causes inflammation in your immune system. Another theory is acetaldehyde, a product of alcohol metabolism more toxic than booze itself, is created when alcohol in the liver breaks down.

2 The term “hangover” did not exist until 1904. The original term was “crapulous”, originating in the 1530s.

3 Not everyone gets hangovers. According to an Australian study, 20-30% of people are immune to the effects of alcohol.

4 But women are more likely to suffer than men. It’s thought to be down to their smaller stature and the lower percentages of water in female bodies.

5 Dark-coloured booze, such as whisky and rum, has higher levels of congeners – toxic compounds that occur during alcohol fermentation – and spell bad hangovers.

6 Hangovers really do get worse as you get older. When we’re young, our bodies produce the powerful antioxidant glutathione, which helps us bounce back from that morning-after feeling. As we age, we produce less.

7 The average among us will spend two years of our life hung over. A survey found a typical drinker in the UK will suffer once a month.

8 A type of soup made of congealed ox blood, cabbage and other vegetables is traditionally eaten to chase away hangovers in Korea.

9 Sicilians have used dried bull’s penis as a cure, ancient Romans opted for owl eggs, while tea brewed with rabbit droppings was supposedly a favourite of American cowboys.

10 Laughing gas was used as a hangover cure for decades before it made its way into medical and dental fields as an anaesthetic.

11 But there’s no real cure – only things that can help. Drink plenty of water, above, and if you can bear it, add salt and sugar to replace the sodium and glycogen lost the night before.

12 Bananas and kiwi fruit, left, are good to restore lost potassium to your body, while eggs contain a protein that can mop up toxins.

13 The patron saint of hangovers is St Bibiana.

14 In German a hangover is a “katzenjammer”, meaning “the wailing of cats”, to Norwegians it’s “jeg har tommermen” – “I have carpenters in my head”, and for the French it’s “avoir la gueule de bois” – “to have a wooden throat”.

15 Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was saved from death by a hangover. He was booked on to American Airlines flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He missed it by just 10 minutes as he was hung over after drinking the night before.