STANFORD, Calif., June 18 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers, inspired by a question posed on syndicated TV's "The Oprah Winfrey Show," found gastric bypass patients get drunk faster.
"It may sound strange, but Oprah really did inspire this study," senior author Dr. John Morton, Stanford University Medical Center, said in a statement.
"After the Oprah show 'Suddenly Skinny' aired in October 2006, I got question after question from patients asking, 'What happens when I drink alcohol?'"
Researchers gave 19 post-operative gastric bypass patients and 17 control subjects 5 ounces each of red wine and told them to drink it within 15 minutes.
The gastric bypass patients reached a breath-alcohol peak of 0.08 percent vs. the control group's peak breath-alcohol level of 0.05 percent. The bypass patients also took significantly longer to return to zero, averaging 108 minutes vs. 72 minutes for the control subjects, according to the study published in the journal Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases.
"The bypass patients have a fundamentally altered alcohol metabolism," Morton said. "They reach a higher peak more quickly and take a longer time to return to zero, and patients aren't really aware of this. The Oprah show did us a favor by pointing it out."
The findings were also presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery.
