Slow Drinking of Beer Attenuates Subjective Sedative Feeling in Healthy Volunteers: A Randomized Crossover Pilot Study

Abstract

The change in physiological parameters and subjective feelings according to the speed of drinking alcohol has not been reported to date. The aim of this randomized crossover pilot study was to investigate the objective and subjective effects of different speeds of alcohol ingestion in healthy volunteers. Accordingly, 11 male and 7 female healthy Japanese adults were asked to consume 480 mL of beer at three different drinking speeds (80, 40, and 20 mL/5 min). According to the objective measurement, the transient increase in blood alcohol and serum uric acid concentrations was most inhibited at a drinking speed of 20 mL/5 min. Acetate, lactate, pyruvate, and lactate/pyruvate ratios did not differ between the three drinking speeds. Stimulant feelings measured by the subjective scores of the Brief Biphasic Alcohol Effects Scale did not differ between the three speeds. However, the sedative feeling score obtained at a drinking speed of 20 mL/5 min (the slowest speed of alcohol consumption) was significantly weakened in comparison with those obtained at drinking speeds of 40 and 80 mL/5 min. Therefore, a slower consumption of alcohol mitigated the subjective sedative feeling. The effects of slower alcohol consumption may be caused by the slower slope of the increasing trend of blood alcohol concentration.

Keywords: alcohol; beer; drinking speed; healthy volunteers; sedative feeling.

Figure 1

Time schedule of the experiments. Participants drank 480 mL of beer at three different speeds (80, 40, and 20 mL/5 min).

Figure 2

(A) Temporal changes in the mean sum of the three scores of the stimulation subscale (Energized, Excited, and Up) are indicated as mean values. (B) Temporal changes in the mean sum of the three scores of the sedation subscale (Sedated, Slow thoughts, and Sluggish) are indicated as mean values. The scores of the subjective stimulant or sedative feelings reported by the volunteers after beer ingestion are expressed as means and standard deviation ((C) maximal scores of stimulant feelings, (D) maximal scores of sedative feelings, (E) AUC_0–150 of temporal scores of stimulant feelings, (F) AUC_0–150 of temporal scores of sedative feelings). Scores with different letters (a,b) are significantly different among the three drinking speeds at p < 0.05 according to the Bonferroni test.