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 remember being 19, working construction, getting into bars because I was with the fellas and drinking TnT’s.
I ordered one one day and Sexy bartender puts both hands on me and says, Sweetie, gin is hardcore, its for alcoholics like myself, you are too young to start drinking it. Have a beer on me instead.
So I stayed away from gin for the rest of my drinking carrer because of her.
Percodan and Wild Turkey worked great for me 35 years ago but as Hunter S. Thompson would likely caution - This prescription is NOT for amateurs! ;-)
Why just yesterday, someone who I work with said his favorite drink is a ‘Xantini’.
Take a martini glass, open up a Xanax tablet and pour out the contents into the bottom, add a cherry, then fill the martini glass with vodka.
*shudder*
Isn't that what they drink in Mongolia? Oh, no, that was fermented mares milk.
Vodka, the other clear liquid.
My favorite scotch is Glenkinchie, there are better scotches out there but it’s the one hits my pleasure centers the best, it’s also VERY aromatic. Of course everybody worships at the altar of Talisker, and with good reason, but there’s plenty of great ones out there, Laphroaig, Balvenie, Dalwhinnie, Bunnahabain. You could go bankrupt trying to try them all. And of course the best part about Scotch, to me, is that they all taste very different straight than they do with water, so really every scotch you buy is two different scotches. Usually when I’m drinking scotch I pour two fingers, drink about half, then bring it up a bit more with water (just a splash if it’s not distillers strength, back up to two fingers if it is), that way I get to have “both” scotches.
That’s always a possibility. And if I did the flavor and smell of Bourbon is very tempting, along with pinot noir wine. Don’t want the consequences though.
I read studies on the effects of various liquors, wines and beers back in the early 70s. Brown liquors and red wines generally have more aldehydes, ketones and other components that bring on that raging hangover. More notably they have a higher content of formaldehyde which gives a lot of credence to the old phrase “getting pickled” or “embalmed”. That said, I’ll still stick with a good Rye over vodka any day.
Odd.
What kind of Bourbon?
I find that my weekends here and there (depending on the financial situations) spent with Booker's, Buffalo Trace (George T. Stagg, or Eagle Rare), Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve, Woodford Reserve, or Basil Haydens leave me feeling quite well in the morning.
3 fingers worth of any of these Nectar's of the gods is good for the soul..
And if you're feeling girly and/or blasphemous, on the rocks.
This study requires further intense scrutiny. They never asked me to participate, and frankly, I'm a little torqued about that. I hope that the bourbon they used was not something like Old Crow, Benchmark, or some sort of Canadian mess.
SNOB OFF
I quit drinking 12-4-1989 after having drank years with the best of'em....one day at a time.
I quit smoking 8-31-2007.
I won't even mention sex....
There. Fixed it for ya.
“Percodan and Wild Turkey worked great for me 35 years ago”
Your liver called and asked if it was safe to come home
My favorite is 12 y/o Glenlivet (my Scots-American buddy, though, loves Glen Morangie). I have also been told that REAL Scots Scotch drinkers prefer 12 y/o to 18 or higher because the complexities and flavors age-out though they do become smoother.
In the other direction, I was a teetotaler for 35 years, then began the pleasure of discovering a whole new spectrum of fine libations (but not to intoxication).
Thakns, I’ll try a couple of those.
I like that method and have followed it at times.
It always seems backwards but I end up going it frequently as well.
I love a scotch “neet” but only if there are no distractions. Otherwise, I like it on the rocks or with a lttle club soda or water and maybe a lime.
Drinking room temp scotch is very personal and I just can’t enjoy it unless the room is calm.
Weird huh?
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