Should you imbibe too much tonight, or any other night, Las Vegas-based Get Down Art wants you to know it's got your back. The company sells and distributes The Hangover Recovery Shot, a little yellow bottle bearing six different images — take your pick — from, you guessed it, "The Hangover" movies.

The recovery shot is a "special combination of key essential amino acids, antioxidants and herbs." It is one of several new "hangover relief" products you may have seen advertised in the days leading up to New Year's Eve. There's also an effervescent tablet called Blowfish and the Bytox patch, designed to prevent a hangover.

The distributor of The Hangover shot estimates that 20 to 30 million people a week in the U.S. suffer from hangovers.

But do these remedies really work?

"My take on it, just by looking briefly at these products, is if something seems too good to be true, it probably is," says Melanie Dwornik, a Registered Dietitian who consults at the Extra Edge Academy, an athletic training facility in Pine Brook.

She cites a 2005 study in the British Medical Journal, which devised a long list of hangover remedies — from aspirin to fresh air to sleep to honey to ginseng — and tested each one.

"Ultimately, their finding was that the most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol-induced hangover is to practice abstinence or moderation," says Dwornik, citing the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans: "For women, that's up to one drink a day, and for men, that's two drinks a day."

And if you're thinking of breaking out a tall vase to use as your champagne glass tonight, forget it: One drink, according to those guidelines, equals 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80 proof spirits.

Should you exceed those limits, the makers of hangover relief products, of course, insist that they really do help. Here's what these three new ones pitch:

* Blowfish, an over-the-counter FDA-regulated drug, was designed to "treat all the symptoms of a hangover with an effervescent tablet that you dissolve in water and drink the morning after." The recommended two-tablet dose contains 1,000 milligrams of aspirin, 120 milligrams of caffeine, 812 milligrams of sodium and 25.2 milligrams of phenylalanine.

* The Bytox patch, ideally applied 45 minutes to an hour before you consume alcohol, is "a combination of different vitamins and minerals, which are exactly the type that gets washed out by a person who is consuming alcohol," says Dr. Leonard Grossman, the New York City plastic and reconstructive surgeon who co-founded the company that makes the product.

Grossman strongly disagrees with the suggestion that these products encourage people to drink too much, saying, "We created the [Bytox] patch for an intelligent drinker."

* As for The Hangover Recovery Shot (officially licensed by Warner Bros.), to be consumed upon waking up, it comes in a two-ounce bottle and contains eight calories and no sugar. Its ingredients "have been specially engineered for maximum hangover relief results."

Medical advice

While Dr. Jennifer Ashton, an Englewood-based OB-GYN, author and network-TV medical correspondent, agrees that "the best way to treat a hangover is obviously to avoid getting completely intoxicated in the first place," she adds, "Most of those over-the-counter remedies are gimmicky, but they can make people feel a little bit better."

She also offers this advice: "If a person has surpassed what their limit is … [and they] drink anywhere from half a liter to a liter of water before bed, and take either aspirin or ibuprofen, that can alleviate a lot of the feelings the next day." (She does not recommend acetaminophen, which is metabolized by the liver, as is alcohol.)

Ashton also recommends a very bland "BRAT" diet (banana, rice, apple and toast) the next day and advises taking a multi-vitamin with B-complex vitamins, which drinking alcohol can deplete. "And then I always recommend that people get some fresh air … just a walk outside for at least 30 minutes is really important. It can make a world of difference."

Dwornik advises people to eat something before they start imbibing, because "the studies … do show that if you start drinking on an empty stomach, that hangover will be much more intense" — and try some chicken soup the day after.

"There is not strong scientific evidence to show or classify food as a cure, but implementing some of these things, if you find yourself in a bind, wouldn't hurt."

Email: rohan@northjersey.com