“Beer for wine and you will feel good, wine for beer and you will feel strange” goes the age-old aphorism. But scientists have now shown that it doesn't matter how you order your drinks. If you drink too much, you will probably still get sick.
Ninety volunteers, aged between 19 and 40, were recruited and split into three groups. The first group consumed about two and a half liters of beer followed by four large glasses of wine. The second group consumed the same amounts of alcohol, but in reverse order. People in the third control group digested either beer only or wine only.
The major strength of this study was its crossover design:One week later, participants in study groups one and two were switched to the opposite drinking order. People of the control group who drank only beer the first time received wine only on the second study day (and vice versa). In this way, the groups were not only compared, but each participant was also their own control.
Participants were asked about their well-being at regular intervals and were asked to rate their perceived level of intoxication on a scale between 0 and 10 at the end of each study day. Before going to bed at the study site, all participants received an individualized amount of chilled drinking water tailored to their body weight. All volunteers were kept under medical supervision overnight.
The next day, participants were asked about their hangover and given a score of 0-56 (called the Acute Hangover Scale) based on factors such as thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, increased heart rate and loss of appetite.
The researchers found that none of the three groups had a significantly different hangover core with different orders of alcoholic beverages. Women generally had slightly worse hangovers than men. Although blood and urine tests, nor factors such as age, gender, body weight, drinking habits, and hangover frequency helped predict hangover intensity, vomiting and intoxication were associated with a more severe hangover.
“The truth is that drinking too many alcoholic beverages is likely to lead to a hangover. The only reliable way to predict how miserable you will feel the next day is by how drunk you feel and if you are sick. Watch out for red flags while drinking.”
