Hangover Hurts Performance

Performance becomes impaired the next morning, following an evening of frivolity and unrelenting intoxication. This surprises no one; however, a new study has revealed that your level of performance has nothing to do with how awful you feel next morning.

Alcoholic beverages contain more or less congeners such as acetone, acetaldehyde, fusel oil, tannins, and furfural; these can effect on the intensity of a hangover by determining just exactly how badly you feel.

But the study led by Damaris J. Rohsenow, professor of community health at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University found that what affects your judgment is simply the alcohol, not the congeners.

For the study, Dr. Rohsenow and colleagues let 58 men and 37 women aged 21 to 24, all heavy but otherwise healthy drinkers, consume bourbon or vodka one night to such a degree that their blood alcohol levels (BAL) reached 0.11g%.  They then drank a placebo the following night. Bourbon contains the highest amounts of congeners while vodka contains the least.

While in sleep, participants were subject to polysomnography recordings overnight; the next morning, self-report and neurocognitive measures were assessed.

Alcohol made hung-over participants feel badly.  Those who drank bourbon felt worse than those who drank vodka the next morning, the researchers found. 

They also found alcohol in both beverages worsened participants' attention for a continuous period of time, although they were able to make accurate choices; in these experiments, bourbon and vodka had an equal effect.

Alcohol from other beverages made participants feel badly, and equally made participants sleep less well.

Compared to vodka, bourbon did make the morning after much worse, with symptoms including headache, nausea, general lousiness, thirst and fatigue.  And people who reported feeling worse performed worse.

The researchers said the feelings from a hangover can affect the performance because they may distract one’s attention.

However, their findings also suggest that just because you drink bourbon and do not feel as badly as when you drink vodka does not mean you will actually perform better on the job.

Rohsenow said that the bottom line is that “becoming intoxicated to a .11 g% BAL makes it less safe for a person to engage in behaviors required for safety-sensitive performance the next morning.”

The study participants were young because young adults are more likely to be heavy drinkers and have problems than their older, wiser counterparts.  Because of this, the authors cautioned that the results may not be applicable to older people.

The study was scheduled to appear in the March 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Alcoholic beverages are recognized by the U.S. National Toxicology Program as cancer-causing agents and have been associated with increased risk of a variety of cancers.

U.S. physicians recommend that if you drink alcohol, drink it in moderation and if you don’t drink, you should never get started.

By Jimmy Downs and editing by Rachel Stockton

(Editor's note: This is an updated version)