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.
Wood Alcohol: Bad, very bad but suitable as a peace offering for Steelers fans
Glinlivet is a “sure thing” though as the first bottle I of scotch I ever bought (single malt at that, IIRC) it was a harsh training ground and so I have a hard time going back to it as a bottle purchase. LOL
Actually I totally get it. Usually when I’m pouring a scotch it’s after the wife has gone to bed so it’s just me and the TV and whichever cat decided they’d rather hang out with me than her. It’s quiet wave goodbye to the day time. Scotch seems to be a very isolationist beverage.
Some of the high-end imported vodkas are made in a manner reminicent of straining sterno through stale bread (humorous rebuttal).
“...and what is strange for me (and I have noticed this on several occasions), vodka puts me in a bad mood and can even make a sweet guy like me mean. It never happens with any other alcohol...very weird.”
Obviously you haven’t had much tequila. LOL
I have no idea about any of that.
Here in the city we call that a Roofie-colada.
I don’t drink now, but in my youth I did extensive research on these two liquids and I can firmly say I like both.
Really? It was invented by Abner Doubleday. He was a Union General during the war. The game was more or less invented during the war by the troops, just to have something different to do with a ball than throw it around. The whole idea of going out into enemy territory from “base” to “base” in order to get “Safe” at “Home” was all about being at war and wanting to get home. The roots of the game are so very poignant for that reason. I recommend the Ken Burns miniseries, Baseball. Yes, he’s a lefty, but he makes damn good documentaries. Anyway, after the war, Doubleday codified the rules and created teams (clubs) and leagues. I don’t know if he was the father of major league baseball but he might have been.
Makes sense. I just don’t like how wussy it has become. A hard slide into 2nd draws ire. If everybody played like Ty Cobb, that would be a game worth watching.
'tis the
Song of Little Mary Standing at the bar-room door,
While the shameful midnight revel
Rages wildly as before.
Father, dear father, come home with me now,
The clock in the steeple strikes one;
You said you were coming right home from the shop
As soon as your day's work was done;
Our fire has gone out, our house is all dark,
And mother's been watching since tea,
With poor brother Benny so sick in her arms And no one to help her but me,
Come home! come home! come home!
Please father, dear father, come home.
Father, dear father, come home with me now,
The clock in the steeple strikes two;
The night has grown colder, and Benny is worse
But he has been calling for you:
Indeed he is worse, ma says he will die--
Perhaps before morning shall dawn;
And this is the message she sent me to bring
"Come quickly, or he will be gone."
Come home! come home! come home!
Please father, dear father, come home.
If that does not bring a tear to your eye, you need a drink.
OK, I just read the wiki on it and apparently little to none of what I just wrote was true. My guess is that it was kind of like poker or pool, many different games could be played with a bat and ball, baseball is what shook out of it in the second half of the 19th century.
Seriously, that's what I heard.
Besides, everyone knows Baseball was actually invented in Russia, along with the Airplane, Cuisinart Blender, and Color TV ... same guy, around 1782.
I treat myself on occasion to a top-shelf tequila; Herradura and Patrone are my favorites. For some reason, vodka is the only alcohol that makes me mean.
President John Adams Baseball Related Quotations
John Adams even mentioned playing with a bat and ball during his sporting years. Baseball, as we know it, had not yet been invented and children of his same age group were playing a modified version of the English game of Rounders.
“Morning, noon and nights (playing with) bat and ball.”- President John Adams
Nothing better than a great bourbon. Try Basil Hayden’s small batch if you can find it.....smooth as silk, but cost over 40 dollars a fifth. I don’t drink bourbon to get drunk, just to enjoy it, 2 fingers a couple times a week..
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