Humans have a long history of drinking alcohol—we've been producing and consuming it for over ten thousand years, roughly as long as we've had agriculture.
It took a long time for people to come up with all sorts of different ideas about the drug and how it worked. So it's not surprising that some of them are wrong. Here are some common myths about alcohol that have been debunked by scientific research.
The order of the drinks does not matter.
You've probably heard some version of “beer before liquor has never been worse” or “beer before wine and you'll feel good.” The basic idea is that you should stick to one type of drink or drink different drinks in a specific order to avoid a hangover. Problem: There is no scientific research to back up this claim.
National Authority on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism calls ordering drinks the cause of hangovers a myth. “In general, the more alcohol a person drinks, the worse their hangover will be,” they write on their website. “This is true whether a person drinks beer, wine, spirits, or a combination of the three.”
Researchers from the University of Witten/Herdecke published an article who specifically studied this issue, conducting perhaps the most German scientific study in history. Groups of people drank beer and then wine, or vice versa, while control groups simply drank one drink or the other. They then invited participants to another session, this time with wine and then beer in reverse order, and compared the severity of the hangover. This resulted in numerous hangovers, although the order of drinks had no real effect.
That doesn't mean you can't predict who will have a hangover at a party. The study convincingly states that “subjective signs of progressive intoxication have been confirmed as accurate predictors of hangover severity.” It also contains perhaps the best sentence I've ever seen in a scientific study: “Multivariate regression analysis revealed that perceived intoxication and vomiting were the strongest predictors of hangover intensity.”
Alcohol doesn't warm you up
After drinking, you may feel a warm sensation – many people experience this feeling and enjoy it. But this does not mean that alcohol really warms you up. This feeling of warmth is the sensation of heat leaving your body, which is not ideal. Dr. Krishna Vakharia, MD from UK, wrote an article explaining the effects of alcohol on your body temperature, stating that while “red cheeks, sweating and hot flashes make us feel warm, our body's core temperature actually drops.”
There are studies to support this. 2005 study at the Center for Advanced Study in the Human Sciences at Waseda University in Japan concluded that alcohol actually lowers body temperature. Participants drank water or alcohol in a moderately hot room. “Skin blood flow and chest sweat rate were significantly increased in alcohol session participants compared to controls 10 minutes after drinking,” the study said. “During the alcohol session, core body temperature began to decline 20 minutes after the onset of sweating and ultimately fell 0.3°C lower than in the control group.”
That is, alcohol makes you feel warm by releasing heat in your body. This warmth is exactly what you need to retain in cold temperatures, so drinking isn't the best way to stay warm. Here you have dogs with brandy barrels around their necks.
Coffee doesn't sober you up
Alcohol is the second most popular drug in the world after caffeine. So it makes sense that there is a common myth about the combination of these two factors: the idea that drinking coffee or any caffeinated beverage can make a person sober.
There is no truth to this idea. Caffeine may make you feel more alert, but it does not counteract the effects of alcohol. A 2010 study In a study conducted by Boston University School of Public Health, 127 participants randomly drank one of four types of beer: non-alcoholic with or without added caffeine and alcoholic with or without added caffeine. Participants then attempted to drive a simulated car.
Conclusion: “Adding caffeine to alcohol does not appear to improve driving or sustained attention/reaction time compared to alcohol alone.” This is consistent with the broader scientific consensus. A cup of coffee may make you feel energized even after a few drinks, but it doesn't mean you're sober. Only time can do this.
