Re: Harmless ingredients...
As I have said before, regardless of how harmless the ingredients are, it is the administration method which the likeliest cause of harm. Human beings have very good immune systems in their guts which only a select few food poisoning organisms can get past. By contrast, if you inject something intravenously, you bypass this immunological safety system.
That these companies are doing this is in its self a form of placebo woo. The only reason for running fluids via an IV drip is when the patient needs fluids urgently, and cannot drink them normally for whatever reason. People with hangovers are not medical emergencies of this kind; there is no earthly reason to expose them to the hazards of an IV line.
If you want to medicalize the process of giving someone fluids, then at most a nasogastric tube could be used. This is however rather an unpleasant way of getting fluids into a person who is perfectly capable of swallowing liquids normally.
All these hung-over morons actually need is a large dose of water with the correct electrolyte mix to be most rapidly absorbed; correctly-formulated oral rehydration mix or any of the rehydration sports drinks will do the trick nicely. The sports drink variants even have the advantage of tasting quite nice, too. Granted, you don't get the placebo effect of a bloke in a white coat sticking a needle in your arm, but you also don't run the risk of septicemia from an iv-sourced infection.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
