Want to avoid a holiday hangover? Don’t belly up to the bar for a belt of bourbon. Pour white wine, vodka and other light-colored spirits, because the color of the alcohol you drink affects the severity of the following day’s hangover, according to a new study reported in the London Daily Mail.
Darker drinks are the worst choices, the study says. The research, to be published in the journal “Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research,” found that darker drinks have more chemical byproducts than light ones.
But the study also found that even though the imbibers who consumed white wine or vodka said they felt better, they performed just as badly when they reported to work the next day as did those suffering due to red wine and whiskey.
If you mostly dread a hangover because of how terrible you feel, you may want to steer clear of bourbon. It turns out to have 37 times more chemicals than vodka, including the solvent acetone, tannin and oils, reports the Daily Mail. These products make people feel lousy after a night of partying.
“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,” said Brown University professor Damaris Rohsenow in the Daily Mail.
In the research, 95 men and women who were healthy but heavy drinkers drank bourbon or vodka to get them to the same level of drunkenness. They were tested the next morning for their reaction time and feelings. Some got a non-alcoholic placebo, just for comparison.
While the dangers of driving while impaired are well-known, being hung over makes you a pretty bad driver, too. In the study, the people who were hung over were worse drivers than others. Yet they didn’t think they were doing badly behind the wheel — no matter which color of booze they consumed.
“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,” Rohsenow said. “But they did no worse after bourbon than vodka.”
This explains why after a night of drinking with Jose Joe I’m usually completely and utterly useless to life. See, Double J likes to party with Jack Daniels, while I like to party with Dr. McGillicuddy. Jose Joe doesn’t like the good Dr. so he usually convinces me to do straight Jack with him. The next day I usually feel like I’m somewhere in between a massive anxiety attack or a stroke. However, if I’m shooting the Dirty Dr., while I’m still absolutely useless at work, at least I feel like I’m in control of myself. While I’m no Scientist, I believe this study may have some merrit to it as it sounds like it makes sense. If I were you, and I was reading this, I’d try it out for myself and then e-mail the results to contact@iblackedout.com. Ya know, just for shits and giggles.
