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Article Excerpt
IN NORTH AMERICA, 65%-73% of adults consume alcohol (World Health Organization, 1999), many of whom have a few drinks in the evening and go to work the next morning. Whereas the acute effects of alcohol are well known (Moskowitz and Fiorentino, 2000), less is known about the carryover effects after blood alcohol concentration (BAC) has returned to zero (Schuckit, 1996). Understanding these residual effects is important because of their potential impact on occupational performance, productivity, and safety.
Research has shown that physical and psychomotor functioning can be impaired post-intoxication. Compared with control conditions, resting heart rate and blood pressure have been shown to increase (Karvinen et al., 1962; Myrsten et al., 1970) whereas maximal oxygen consumption has been found to decrease (O'Brien, 1993). Time decrements on simple and choice reaction tests have been reported by some (Myrsten et al., 1970) but not others (Gauvin et al., 1993; Lemon et al., 1993; Seppala et al., 1976); however, Seppala et al. (1976) reported more choice reaction errors. Similarly, for more complex cognitive/motor tasks like simulated flying and driving, post-intoxication decrements have been found by some researchers (Petros et al., 2003; Yesavage et al., 1994) but not others (Taylor et al., 1996; Tornros and Laurell, 1991).
The external validity of many of these studies can be questioned, because subjects consumed a single large dose of alcohol relative to their body weight in a short period of time (e.g., Lemon et al., 1993; Myrsten et al., 1970; Petros et al., 2003; Taylor et al., 1996; Yesavage et al., 1994). Individuals in society typically consume alcohol in "standard" units (e.g., bottles/cans of beer, glasses of wine, shots of distilled spirits), over a longer period of time. Our methodology reflects a scenario with greater external validity, in which individuals consume a moderate number of drinks in the evening (Single and Wortley, 1993) and perform occupational tasks the following morning. Consequently, we measured "hangover" symptoms, as well as physical, physiological, and psychomotor functioning the morning after consuming zero, two, four, or six bottles of commercially brewed beer. We hypothesized that the number and severity of hangover symptoms would increase with the amount of alcohol consumed and that physical, physiological, and psychomotor functioning would be impaired following consumption of higher doses.
Method
Twelve healthy, nonsmoking, Caucasian female university students (mean [SD] = 22.0 [2.8] years; 67.2 [6.9] kg) provided voluntary consent to participate. The study was approved by the institutional research ethics board. Females rather than males were recruited (1) because of the need for hangover research with females (Gauvin et al., 1993), and (2) because their lower body water content produces a higher BAC (Marshall et al., 1983), thereby increasing the likelihood of producing hangover symptoms. On average, participants reported drinking 1.98 (0.96) days per week, consuming 5.71 (1.97) drinks per occasion.
Participants consumed zero, two, four, or six bottles of commercially brewed beer (341 ml bottles of Labatt Blue; 5% weight by volume; 13.5 g alcohol/bottle) in a laboratory setting over four test sessions. Order of dose was counterbalanced across participants. This was achieved by randomly selecting a dose order for each participant from the 24 possible dose-order combinations. Beer was...
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