Washington, Dec 19 (IANS) American whiskey bourbon triggers a worse hangover than vodka the next day, says a new study.
Bourbon has 37 times the amount of toxic chemicals called congeners that vodka has and can cause a worse hangover, though impairment in people’s next-day task performance is about the same for both beverages, it says.

Congeners are found in byproducts of the materials used in the fermenting process of alcoholic beverages. These byproducts are complex organic molecules with toxic effects.

”While 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 Brown University.

”There are far more of them in the darker distilled beverages and wines than in the lighter coloured 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,” says a release of Brown University.

The results of the study will be published in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.