We’ve all heard the saying, or some variant thereof.

Yup, ‘beer before wine and you’ll feel fine, but wine before beer and you’ll feel queer’.

Or, as the French say, “bière sur vin est venin, vin sur bière est belle manière”, which translates to ‘beer after wine is venom, wine after beer is an excellent path”.

(Side note, and also of vital importance, is ‘beer before grass, you’re on your arse, grass before beer, you’re in the clear’.)

Common knowledge tells you that you should start with beer, before moving onto wine or harder stuff, but now a new study by Cambridge University and German scientists suggests that the order of drinking doesn’t have that much effect on the hangover.

Not a bad study to be a guinea pig in, right? Over to the Telegraph:

Researchers asked volunteers to drink two and a half pints of beer followed by four large glasses of wine, while a second group consumed the same amount of alcohol in reverse order.

The next day they were asked to rate their hangover on a score of 0 – 56 which measures thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, stomach ache, increased heart rate and loss of appetite.

A week later the groups were asked to switch around to gauge whether the order of drinks made any difference.

But after recording the levels of  hangovers from both groups, researchers concluded there was no difference. Put simply, if you drink too much, you’re still likely to be ill whether you follow the rule or not.

So hangovers are rated on a scale of 0-56? Pretty sure I’ve had one 56 before – I still remember it. Dark days.

According to Dr Kai Hensel, a senior clinical fellow at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the study, researchers thought they would help drinkers find an approach to lessen the hangover, but came away empty-handed:

“A clear result in favour of one particular order could help to reduce hangovers and help many people have a better day after a night out – though we encourage people to drink responsibly,” said Dr Hensel.

“Unfortunately, we found that there was no way to avoid the inevitable hangover just by favouring one order over another.

“Unpleasant as hangovers are, we should remember that they do have one important benefit, at least: they are a protective warning sign that will certainly have aided humans over the ages to change their future behaviour. In other words, they can help us learn from our mistakes.”

I’ve done the maths in my head, and around 0,001 percent of people saying “I’m never drinking again” actually stick to their guns, so I’d say we aren’t great at learning from our mistakes.

Sorry to burst your ‘beer before wine’ bubble, but you’re waking up feeling like turd either way.

Especially when you throw a few tequilas in, and that final double at the end of the night that you know you didn’t need.

See you next week, where we do it all again.

[source:telegraph]