Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/18/2009 6:34:43 AM PST by Pharmboy
Many alcoholic beverages contain byproducts of the materials used in the fermenting process. These byproducts are called "congeners," complex organic molecules with toxic effects including acetone, acetaldehyde, fusel oil, tannins, and furfural. Bourbon has 37 times the amount of congeners that vodka has. A new study has found that while drinking a lot of bourbon can cause a worse hangover than drinking a lot of vodka, impairment in people's next-day task performance is about the same for both beverages.
Results will be published in the March 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
"While the toxic chemicals called congeners could be poisonous in large amounts, they occur in very small amounts in alcoholic beverages," explained Damaris J. Rohsenow, professor of community health at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. "There are far more of them in the darker distilled beverages and wines than in the lighter colored ones. While the alcohol alone is enough to make many people feel sick the next day, these toxic natural substances can add to the ill effects as our body reacts to them."
Rohsenow added that few studies have looked at the effects of high- versus low-congener beverages on next-day hangover or performance, and some of those early studies were not careful to wait until breath alcohol levels (BALs) were close to zero before measuring performance, so results may have included some of alcohol's direct effects.
"We wanted to investigate next-day effects of bourbon versus vodka while ensuring that BALs were zero or almost zero when we studied performance, and we used a variety of performance measures classified by their relevance to safety," said Rohsenow. "We wanted to use a new hangover questionnaire that included only the symptoms that had been found to be valid in laboratory studies of hangover. We wanted to find out if bourbon's effects the next day were due to different effects on sleep, so people's sleep patterns were recorded while they slept. Finally, we wanted to know if performance impairments the morning after drinking were associated with how hung-over the person felt."
Researchers recruited and paid 95 (58 women, 37 men) healthy, heavy drinkers to participate in one acclimatization night, followed by two drinking nights. The participants drank bourbon or vodka to an average of 0.11 g% BAL on one night, with a matched placebo on the other night, randomized for type and order. Polysomnography recordings were made overnight; self-report and neurocognitive measures were assessed the next morning.
"First, while alcohol in the beverage did increase how hung-over people reported feeling the next morning compared to drinking a placebo, bourbon made people feel even worse than vodka did," said Rohsenow. "Second, alcohol in the beverage did make people do worse when they needed to pay attention for a continuous period of time while making rapid accurate choices, but they did no worse after bourbon than after vodka on these tasks. Therefore, while people felt worse, they didn't perform worse after bourbon than after vodka. However, people were not aware that they were performing worse since they thought their driving ability was not impaired in the morning even though they could not react as well." She added that other studies have found that professional pilots do worse on aspects of flying that require continuous attention across tasks the morning after drinking to intoxication.
"A third finding was that while alcohol in the beverages made people sleep less well because they woke up more during the night, this was no worse after bourbon than it was after vodka," Rohsenow said. "This means that bourbon's greater effects on hangover are not due to it having greater effects on sleep. Fourth, people who reported more hangover symptoms also did worse in their ability to pay attention for a continuous period of time while making rapid accurate choices."
Regarding this last finding, that people with more hangover symptoms – feelings of headache, nausea, general lousiness, thirst and fatigue – also performed worse when required to pay continuous attention and make choices, Rohsenow said that feeling worse was perhaps distracting them, or that it just hurt more to use the extra energy needed to pay close attention. "A second possibility is that as alcohol was metabolized into other substances in the body before leaving, these substances had a direct effect on the nervous system in addition to increasing hangover so that these were two separate but related after-effects of drinking to intoxication," she said.
The bottom line, said Rohsenow, is that becoming intoxicated to a .11 g% BAL makes it less safe for a person to engage in behaviors required for safety-sensitive performance the next morning. "Many safety-sensitive occupations require that workers be able to pay close attention to a number of tasks over a period of time, and to respond quickly with the right choices, and drinking to excess was found to impair this performance just after alcohol had left people's bodies."
### Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, "Intoxication with Bourbon versus Vodka: Effects on Hangover, Sleep and Next-Day Neurocognitive Performance in Young Adults," were: Jonathan Howland, Alissa B. Almeida, Jacey Greece, Sara Minsky, and Carrie S. Kempler of the Youth Alcohol Prevention Center at Boston University School of Public Health; and J. Todd Arnedt of the University of Michigan Medical School. The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Center for Research Resources, and the Youth Alcohol Prevention Center at Boston University School of Public Health. This release is supported by the Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network at http://www.ATTCnetwork.org.
I have three! But I had wisdom teeth taken out yesterday.
Well, and I’m off today.
I love that short terrible time between “Now you’ve done it!” and “Now your gonna’ get it!”
It’s like the peace in the eye of the hurricane.
Well duh! Vodka is in essence, grain alcohol and water with a completely neutral flavor. It can have other flavorings added (the Russians used to enjoy paper-flavored vodka...look it up...), while bourbons and whiskeys by their very nature and because of the presence of these “congeners” have a distinct flavor.
In addition, most of the unfavorable elements found in raw whiskey are reduced by absorption in the charcoal that lines the barrels the liquor is aged in. A lot of commercial whiskey is also filtered through more charcoal before bottling.
Grain alcohol is one of the first “value added” products that man came up with, and is an excellent way to concentrate the value of a bushel of grain in a valuable and useful product. Brewed beer was once a medicinal substance, and was even considered to be blessed in ancient times, because it was Monks who figured out how to brew, and since they boiled their mash, the product was much cleaner (and therefore healthier) for drinking than the local water...
The author can badmouth demon alcohol all he wants but the basic concept that the products he is complaining about are either largely absent from the final modern product, or are there deliberately to provide flavor.
Brew science is a very complex subject, and anyone who practices that hobby would be glad to discuss the subject with this egghead, and at least try to convert him with a proper beverage or two...
Except for a glass of wine or two with dinner, we don’t drink during the week. I enjoy my bourbon as a “treat” on the weekend. I’ll have two-four fingers on Sunday during football. It’s a pleasure I enjoy very much, and know that enjoyment would diminish with abuse. It’s the same with anything in life; overindulging lessens the value.
Bourbon tastes better than vodka. AND it’s American.
Martha Washington's Rum Punch
Ingredients:
- 3 oz. White Rum
- 3 oz. Dark Rum
- 3 oz. Orange Curacao
- 4 oz. Simple Syrup
- 4 oz. Lemon Juice
- 4 oz. Fresh Orange Juice
- 3 Lemons quartered
- 1 Orange quartered
- 1/2 Tsp. Grated nutmeg
- 3 Cinnamon sticks (broken)
- 6 Cloves
- 12 oz. Boiling water
In a container, mash the orange, lemons, cinnamon sticks, cloves and nutmeg. Add syrup, lemon and orange juice. Pour the boiling water over the mixture in a container. Let it cool for a few minutes then add the white rum, dark rum and orange curaco. Strain well into a pitcher or punch bowl and serve over ice in goblets and decorate with wheels of lemon and orange. Dust with a little nutmeg and cinnamon. (Source: Distilled Spirits Council)
Did you know...? The first president of the United State made whiskey at his Mount Vernon estate 200 years ago. Washington made 11,000 gallons of whiskey first year of operation that was almost valued $7,500, which was a fair amount of money in the 18th century. The distillery was considered one of the largest in the country. To toast to American heritage, try Martha Washington's original rum punch found in her private journals.
From here.
HA! Brilliant comment...
This is true of Blended Whiskeys.........not Bourbon. Bourbon is the purest of liquors, it is the apex of the distillers art. /true but said in a humorous tone.
For some reason I prefer vodka - less of a hangover. Maybe it goes back to a run-in I once had with Jack Daniels.....
Not really.
Taste matters. (And though I certainly consume my share of the world's Bourbon production, I am never affected by it the next day.)
ML/NJ
Absolut, Ketel One, or Grey Goose. There is a world of difference between the top-of-the-line stuff and the rest.
Absolut, Ketel One, or Grey Goose. There is a world of difference between the top-of-the-line stuff and the rest.
Absolut, Ketel One, or Grey Goose. There is a world of difference between the top-of-the-line stuff and the rest.
Once I get started with Bourbon, I drink a whole lot! And I still don't worry about after affects.
Well I ain’t seen my baby since I don’t know when...
Vodka is alcohol, water, and nothing else. Nothing. Alcohol has no taste. Water has no taste. Vodka can be made from anything, as long as the final product is only alcohol and water.
All other hard liquors are a combination of alcohol, water, and SOMETHING ELSE. Its the something else that gives the unique flavor (and what gives burbon, rum, tequila, gin, etc... their unique taste.)
Or to put it another way, every hard liquor is really Vodka with flavoring.
Ya and in Oak Barrels, which make fine smoking wood one the BBQ. OH you forgot the Ruskies make Wodka. Drinking something made out of a potato does not sound appealing.
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