Healthy Living by Kirstie_McIntosh

When festive season rattles ever closer, normal midweek nights at home are replaced by the inevitable Christmas drinks at the pub, and where there is one gin and tonic there's always another (in my experience anyway). But how booze savvy are we? There are numerous strategies on how one should prepare the body for the onslaught of alcohol and many, many ways to nurse a hangover (mine's prairie oyster hands-down!) but do know the myths from the facts?

Test yourself...are the following three statements true or false?

Drinking milk before the party reduces the effects of alcohol
This is true, having a glass the white stuff before you drink really does 'line' your stomach and slows the absorption of alcohol therefore delaying its effects. But it has to be the full-fat type, semi or skimmed just won't cut it.

Drinks with ice in are weaker
Now this is false, well technically it's true if you let the ice melt completely, but let's face it, it doesn't tend to get to the melting stage. The thing is, the coldness of icy drinks triggers a valve at the top of your stomach to open, which encourages you gulp rather than sip, therefore making you drink more.

Alcohol warms you up
Completely false, a quick nip from a hip flask feels like a little bit of liquid central heating, but knocking back a few more gulps will dilate your blood vessels quickly causing the body to lose heat and therefore temperature to drop.

The best bet if you're cold, is a cup of Delia Smith's Mulled Wine, or Mullered wine as I affectionately refer to it, after several cups one Christmas eve which resulted in an unfortunate event with the Christmas tree...believe me those pine needles get everywhere.

Sometimes you should drive and not drink
True, in my case anyway - as a few festive drinks were planned last night after work, I decided to leave my car at home and get a ride home later. Bad move, someone smacked into the back of my parked car outside my house. Excellent! Looks like it might be right off too, and the irony of it all, the bloke that did it is on the local traffic calming committee.

So, Santa, if you are reading this - can you get a soft-top into my stocking? Black of course...