Drinking beer or wine first has no effect on severity of hangover
- by Laura Grandis
- in Médecine
- — Fév 10, 2019
An answer to the age-old question does drinking beer before - or after - wine make you feel fine!
Determined to find a way to help people have a better day after a night out, the researchers recruited 90 courageous soulsin Germany between the ages of 19 and 40 to drink beer, wine or both.
While you may not be able to prevent a hangover by drinking alcohol in a certain order, you should be sure to cut yourself some slack the next day.
The old wives' rhymes we tell ourselves about responsible alcohol consumption have basically nothing to do with reality, a new study on drinking has found.
Speaking about the study, Jöran Köchling, one of the authors of the study said, "We didn't find any truth in the idea that drinking beer before wine gives you a milder hangover than the other way around".
The first group consumed around two and a half pints of beer followed by four large glasses of wine. They were also asked to judge their level of drunkenness on a scale of 0 to 10 at the end of each day.
The third group of students was given only beer or only wine.
The other group drank the same amount in the opposite order.
The research, carried out by the University of Cambridge and Witten/Herdecke University in Germany, aimed to discover how the order in which alcoholic drinks are consumed can affect the next morning's hangover.
The study suggests that regardless of what order you drink that glass of wine and pint of beer in, you're probably still going to feel ill the next day. The official advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is to stop after a daily quota of one drink for women, or two for men. The next day, participants were asked about their hangover symptoms; and they were given a score based on the number and severity of those symptoms, such as thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, stomach ache, increased heart rate and loss of appetite. This way, the groups were not only compared to each other, but each participant was their own control, too.
Changing the order of drinks made no significant difference to hangover scores, which were measured using a questionnaire, the study found.
Researchers from Witten/Herdecke University and the University of Cambridge tested 90 students between the ages of 19 and 40 and split them in to three separate groups. "We should all pay attention to these red flags when drinking".
Unfortunately, however, scientists have yet to find the ever-elusive "hangover cure" for which drinkers from time immemorial have been waiting.
Experts say the best way to avoid a brutal hangover is to drink in moderation.
"One should be mindful of the important benefits of a symptomatic hangover-a protective warning sign that will certainly have aided humans over the ages to modify future behavior".
