Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers

[MarkEdwards]

Here's an interesting news item:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/dark-liquor-makes-for-worse-hangovers/

The highlighting below is mine. Poor vodka drinkers - they aren't getting all the good stuff like we are (evil grin).

A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

But vodka drinkers aren’t off the hook: Drinkers’ sleep suffered equally with both drinks, as did their performance on tasks requiring attention and quick responses. Understanding the lingering effects of alcohol after a night of heavy drinking is important for people who engage in safety-sensitive tasks, such as driving, while hung over Rohsenow says.

The researchers recruited 95 healthy young adults, ages 21 to 33, and gave them caffeine-free cola mixed with bourbon, vodka or tonic water. The drinking ended when participants’ breath-alcohol concentrations hit an average of 0.11, well over the legal intoxication limit. Participants were then hooked up to sleep monitors, which record brain activity, and allowed to sleep it off. At 7 a.m. the next day, the researchers roused the subjects from bed (a wake-up that did not include coffee or aspirin) and asked them to rate the severity of their hangovers.

Overall, bourbon drinkers reported feeling worse than vodka drinkers, rating higher on scales that measure the severity of hangover malaise, including headache, nausea, loss of appetite and thirst. It should come as no surprise that alcohol drinkers said they felt much worse than those who had drunk only tonic water.

One reason for the different effects of vodka and bourbon, Rohsenow says, could be that bourbon contains 37 times more toxic compounds than vodka does, including nasty organic molecules such as acetone, acetaldehyde, tannins and furfural. A good rule of thumb for liquors, she says, is that the clearer they are, the less of these substances they contain.

Both the bourbon drinkers and vodka drinkers slept poorly compared to the nondrinkers, the team found. The next morning, when the participants performed cognitive tests that required attention and quick reaction times, the drinkers performed worse than the nondrinkers, but the type of alcohol had no effect on performance. Both groups of drinkers were impaired equally.

[tommyboy38]

Those aren't toxic compounds....that's flavor!!

[BBQ+Bourbon]

That jives with my experience. I can get drunk on beer and wake up feeling normal, but bourbon leaves a lingering hangover.

[p_elliott]

I have to drink a lot of bourbon to get a hangover from it. I get a hangover from beer much faster.

[ErichPryde]

that makes two of us.

[JamesW]

I have to drink a lot of bourbon to get a hangover from it. I get a hangover from beer much faster.

I often get a hangover from beer while drinking it. Rarely get any from bourbon.

[OscarV]

6 one ounce shots of bourbon over a certain period of time, no problem.

6 twelve ounce beers over the same time period will give me a hang over.

[Joshua]

I've gotten hangovers from beer, wine, and vodka before... but honestly I can't say I have from bourbon. They were mixing it with soda, which of course is going to be a bit more rough with dehydration. Also, .11? Really? .1 was legal to drive here until a year or so ago.

I don't measure my blood alcohol levels, but if I'm getting a hangover I really assume I've had it either higher then .11 or I am very dehydrated.

[T Comp]

This is another research study where the least supported, subjective and dubious of the findings gets played up with the sound bite headline.

The only science in the research actually found no difference between the effects of bourbon and vodka. This was based on the measurements of sleep by polysomnography and performance activities by neurocognitive testing. The so called hangover effects were measured on purely subjective self report of the participants....so the weakest link of the study turns into the headline. And effecting those self reports, how did the participants not know what they were drinking with cola being the mixer?

The research takes a turn to the ludicrous when the researcher speculates about the "toxic compounds" in bourbon being related to the different effects when it was only the self reported subjective symptoms that were different.

If these compounds are truly toxic what about some further reference, comment or research on the life expectancy of whiskey versus vodka drinking cultures. How's that life expectancy of 58 for a Russian male related to all that non toxic vodka he consumes? These self report symptoms are as reliable as my own observation that many master bourbon distillers seem to live long and non hung over lives in spite of all the "toxic compounds".

[Old Lamplighter]

Here's an interesting news item:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/dark-liquor-makes-for-worse-hangovers/

The highlighting below is mine. Poor vodka drinkers - they aren't getting all the good stuff like we are (evil grin).

One reason for the different effects of vodka and bourbon, Rohsenow says, could be that bourbon contains 37 times more toxic compounds than vodka does, including nasty organic molecules such as acetone, acetaldehyde, tannins and furfural. A good rule of thumb for liquors, she says, is that the clearer they are, the less of these substances they contain.

Both the bourbon drinkers and vodka drinkers slept poorly compared to the nondrinkers, the team found. The next morning, when the participants performed cognitive tests that required attention and quick reaction times, the drinkers performed worse than the nondrinkers, but the type of alcohol had no effect on performance. Both groups of drinkers were impaired equally.

My wife has been preaching this to me for some time now....usually with her vodka in hand.....as well as telling me that is why she sleeps better than me (despite the findings that sleep disturbance from both bourbon & vodka are equal). She is telling me that acetone is nail polish remover.Anyhow, it is now most unfortunate for me that I stumbled upon this post while she was looking over my shoulder.....it may tend to curb my hunting forays in the future in addition to monetary resources for same. I guess it is the hazards of being married to a nurse......at least that is how I dismiss such discussions as this between us.....and, why in part I don't mind working on the road at times!

[ILLfarmboy]

This discussion comes up from time to time and the articles that generate these discussions are usually just like the one cited above.

The very first sentence: "A new study may help drinkers pick their poison."

Right there, that's a tip off, and a good indicator of the tone of what will follow.

Who picks their poison based on the severity of its hangover potential?

And why are tannins grouped with the "toxic compounds". I've never gotten a hang over from coffee or tea.

[MarkEdwards]

[the article says]... bourbon contains 37 times more toxic compounds than vodka does, including nasty organic molecules such as acetone, acetaldehyde, tannins and furfural

Well, if I'm being poisoned, at least I'm doing it with taste. I never could stomach the non-flavor of vodka. At a guess, I'd think the "nasty organic molecules" are at such a low concentration as to not be a health hazard at all.

Also, isn't "furrfu" Rot13 for "sheesh"? What do you get if you distill it into furfural? :grin:

[Rughi]

Guzzling whiskey should give you a hangover. Pain is your body's way of telling you that you're damaging it. Leprosy keeps one from feeling pain, but I don't see anyone innoculating themself with it.

I shudder to think what I would have done to my body back in my '20s if I didn't have to recover from my overindulgences. A hangover leprosy would have been disastrous.

Accordingly, Vodka's partial inhibition of hangovers is another proof that it is of the devil. Bourbon makes you happy and also protects you from hurting yourself.:grin:

Roger

[MarkEdwards]

Bourbon makes you happy and also protects you from hurting yourself.:grin:

[silverfish]

Jumping on the bandwagon, Luxist proclaims "Study

Finds Bourbon Gives You A Tougher Hangover".

[MarkEdwards]

Jumping on the bandwagon, Luxist proclaims "Study

Finds Bourbon Gives You A Tougher Hangover".

Maybe bourbon makers can start marketing it as "The drink for tough guys." :cool:

[B3Nut]

I've gotten only one hangover from bourbon, a night of overenthusiastic quaffing of EWB and coke, after excessive pigging out at an Italian restaurant. I never got a hangover from MM (a regular gig-night pour even now), even after becoming quite blasted once when I was initiated into the band at a gig where the MM and cokes were becoming heavily biased toward MM due to a conspiracy between our sax player, my wife, and the bartender. (this was before I became a serious bourbonista, but still...) My wife drove me home that night. Next morning....fresh as a daisy. Go figure....