Live Science reports that a new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition earlier this week, finds that the order in which you consume alcoholic drinks won't actually help you avoid a hangover.

Rather, drinking too much alcohol of any kind — and in any order — will likely give you a hangover, the study researchers conclude.

Lead study author, Jöran Köchling, of Witten/Herdecke University in Germany, says the researchers didn't find any truth in the idea that drinking beer before wine gives you a milder hangover than the other way around.

"The truth is that drinking too much of any alcoholic drink is likely to result in a hangover."

There is no medically proven way to prevent or treat a hangover — the symptoms of headache, nausea and fatigue that come with drinking too much alcohol.

Instead, people sometimes rely on such unproven folk sayings as "wine before beer"; or "grape or grain but never the twain"; or "beer before liquor, never been sicker." Similar folk wisdom on the ordering of wine and beer exist in other languages, including German and French.

The new study put these proverbs to the test. The researchers recruited 90 healthy volunteers aged 19 to 40 who agreed to down large amounts of alcohol, for science.

"The only reliable way of predicting how miserable you'll feel the next day is by how drunk you feel and whether you are sick. We should all pay attention to these red flags when drinking," Köchling said.

The researchers note that the study used only lager beer and white wine, so it's unclear if the results apply to other types of alcohol.

LiveScience