Mixing alcohol with diet drinks can increase intoxication, U.S. researchers are warning consumers.
Drinking on a empty stomach is well known to reduce alcohol concentrations. How diet drinks containing artificial sweeteners raise risk of intoxication hasn't been explored to same degree, despite the greater potential for impaired driving.
When researchers had 16 men and women come to a lab three times for different doses of vodka, sweetened and diet pop or a placebo in a random order, they found that consuming alcohol with a diet mixer resulted in 18 per cent higher breath alcohol concentration compared with having the same amount with a sweetened mixer.
"Many people probably chose to mix their alcohol with diet mixers, because they're concerned about the number of calories they're consuming," study author Cecile Marczinski of Northern Kentucky University in Heighland Heights, Ky., said in an interview with CBC News.
"But really having a higher blood alcohol concentration is much more harmful to your body," in terms of potential damage of the brain, liver and risk for alcoholism.
For the study published in this week's online issue of the journal Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research, Marczinski and colleague Amy Stamates measured the volunteers' breath alcohol concentrations and had them do computerized tests measuring response time and error rates like those of a driver who has decide to hit the gas or brake, they also found higher rates of impairment with the diet mixers.
"What I think is going on is that the stomach recognizes a sugary drink a bit like food. There's something to digest," Marczinski said. In contrast, the researchers suspect the diet mixers get through the stomach faster so blood alcohol spikes faster like drinking without having something to eat.
"Sugar slows things down."
The researchers said while the peak alcohol concentrations were above the 0.08 legal limit for driving, willingness to drive ratings didn't differ between the alcohol and placebo groups. Participants appeared unaware of the differences in breath alcohol.
"The elevation in breath alcohol concentration associated with diet mixers warrants greater consideration and consumers should be made aware of this phenomenon," the study's authors concluded.
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Mixing diet drinks with alcohol adds to impairment
