Study Examines Next-Day Task Performance After Bourbon or Vodka Consumption
There is a common belief that the intensity of the hangover has much to do with the type of alcohol consumed the night before. Science Daily recently summarized a new study that found while drinking a lot of bourbon can cause a worse hangover than the same amount of vodka, impairment in next-day task performance is about the same for both beverages.
A variety of alcoholic beverages contain byproducts of the materials used in the fermenting process. These byproducts are known as congeners or complex organic molecules with toxic effects, such as acetone, acetaldehyde, fusel oil, tannins and furfural. When compared with vodka, bourbon has 37 times the amount of congeners.
"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."
In studying women and men and their consumption of either bourbon or vodka and next-day task performance, researchers measured the hangover impact the next morning compared to a placebo.
Alcohol in the beverage did make people do worse when they needed to pay attention for a continuous period of time, but they did no worse whether they had consumed vodka or bourbon. One important element is that people were not aware they were performing worse, even though they did not react well.
