HealthWrap: Head off a hangover

Here's a new way to head off a hangover: Drink your New Year's toasts from a tall, thin glass. You'll end up consuming less alcohol that way and presumably feel better the next morning.

The explanation stems from an optical illusion: People universally believe vertical lines are longer than horizontal ones of the same length. Thus, even experienced bartenders persist in pouring more liquor into short, wide glasses than tall, thin ones with the same volume.

"Education, practice, concentration and experience don't correct the overpouring," said Cornell University Professor Brian Wansink.

Wansink studied the phenomenon with Koert van Ittersum of Georgia Institute of Technology, and the results are in the new issue of the British Medical Journal. The study was simplicity itself -- 198 college students (of legal drinking age, Cornell points out) were asked to put a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor into short, wide tumblers or tall, thin highball glasses.

The students routinely put 30 percent more alcohol in the short glasses than the tall ones. When 86 professional bartenders with an average six years on the job were given the same task, even they averaged 20 percent more.

The advice from Wansink: "Use tall glasses or glasses with alcohol-level marks etched on them." The same thing applies to parents: Tall, thin glasses for sodas but short, wide ones for milk and other healthy drinks.

Bottom line: Ring in the New Year with a highball glass, no matter what you're drinking.

In another study involving consumption and health, researchers have identified a link between diet and type 2 diabetes -- the kind that usually begins in adulthood.

In mice, a high-fat diet disrupts insulin production and leads to clear signs of type 2 diabetes, according to researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Their report, in the new issues of the journal Cell, showed that knocking out a specific mouse gene disrupts insulin. That gene already has been shown to function less well in people who eat a high-fat diet.

"If our findings can be applied to humans, they should give us important insights into how type 2 diabetes may be prevented and treated," said Jamey Marth, a Howard Hughes investigator from the University of California, San Diego.

And the implications could go beyond diabetes. In some diseases, too much insulin can be a problem, Marth noted. Those include cancer, cardiovascular illness, ovarian disorders and Alzheimer's.

"It may be that suppressing insulin production to some degree could be beneficial in such disorders," Marth said.

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E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com