To find out the effect of these substances on hangover severity, researchers in the US recruited university students who were regular drinkers, without alcohol problems. Bourbon whisky, for example, contains 37 times the quantity of congeners as vodka. These are the other substances produced during fermentation, such as acetone, acetaldehyde, fusel oil and the best-known, tannins, which give darker drinks their colour and part of their flavour. If combining three or four measures of spirits alongside other ingredients, a throbbing head and dry throat is probably just the result of consuming more alcohol in total.īeyond the ethanol that triggers intoxication, the other key ingredients that affect hangovers are what the beverage industry calls congeners. Mixing drinks needn’t necessarily increase the overall amount of alcohol consumed, but it may do with cocktails.
In a study of young Danes on holiday, almost a third of those who consumed at least 12 units of alcohol (roughly equivalent to four pints of lager or four 250ml glasses of wine) avoided hangovers. Many report that they don’t get hangovers and no one quite knows why. The same quantity of alcohol does not always result in the same severity of hangover. The higher the alcohol content, and the faster you drink it, the worse the hangover. The first of the two main ingredients of a drink that affect the severity of a hangover is obvious. In addition there’s evidence that the immune system is disrupted and that this could be the cause of the headache, the nausea and the fatigue.
Is there any evidence beyond the anecdotal that drinking wine followed by beer or vice versa makes hangovers worse?Ī review of previous research published in 2000 confirms that the causes of the main symptoms of hangovers are dehydration, changes in the levels of hormones such as aldosterone and cortisol, and the toxic effects of alcohol itself. All of which begs the question of how reliable these sayings are. Beer before wine and you’ll feel fine.” Or is it the other way round? After a couple of drinks it’s not always easy to remember. One version suggests: “Wine before beer and you’ll feel queer. Then there are the theories about the order in which to consume different tipples. It is far from uncommon to hear people who have woken up feeling sick, dehydrated and with a splitting headache blaming their hangovers on having unwisely mixed their drinks. "Grape or grain, but never the twain." So runs the old folk wisdom that advises against drinking wine or beer on the same night.
0 kommentar(er)
