From Lifehacker.com:

Hangovers rank right up there with drunk dialing your angry ex as one of the least pleasant drinking-related side effects. Stave off a hangover with these before and after tips—and skip the hangover myths.

Photo by Perfecto Insector.

Hangovers are no fun even if the events leading up to the hangover were a blast. Today we’re taking a look at the various preventive measures and cures people undertake in the name of keeping hangovers away, highlighting the good, the bad, and the worthless hangover “cures”.

Disclaimer: Before we delve into the myths about hangover cures and the effective ways you can deal with a hangover, let’s get one big thing out of the way: As far as your body is concerned, alcohol is a poison. A little now and then might make you stronger—see The Princess Bride for a field-guide to better living through micro-dosing on poison—but a lot at one time throws your metabolic processes out of whack and your body goes full-bore at trying to purge itself of the Cutty Sark you so thoughtfully shared with it. The only 100% effective hangover prevention is to drink conservatively or not at all, and the only 100% effective hangover “cure” is time and fluids. If you never drank, however, you wouldn’t be here reading this guide, so let’s get on with the debunking and validating.

The Myths—Hair of the Dog and Other Not So Great Ideas

In every culture with access to alcohol, myths abound about how to cure a hangover. In Ireland it used to be said you should bury your friend up to his neck in wet sand to help him through his hangover. A Haitian myth has it that turning the cork of the hangover-causing-bottle into a voodoo doll and sticking 13 pins in it will keep the hangover at bay. Other strange remedies from around the globe include breathing in the smoke from a coal fire and rubbing limes on your arms. We won’t spend any time debunking why rubbing fruit on your body isn’t going to cure a hangover, but we will look at the most common remedy claims. Photo by Eustaquio Santimano.

Drinking More Alcohol, aka Hair of the Dog: This is quite likely the most heavily toted hangover cure in the boozin’-recovery handbook. Unfortunately it’s completely ineffective. Drinking when you’re suffering from a hangover makes you—temporarily!—feel better simply because alcohol dulls your senses. You could just as easily prescribe a double-shot of Tequila as a “remedy” for bashing your thumb with a hammer.

You might achieve temporary relief from your hangover—if it works at all—but you’ll just prolong the agony. Your body has to process all the toxins you spent all night shoving in it (delicious or not, alcohol is no wheat-grass smoothie when it comes to being body-friendly), and giving it more just extends the timetable. Photo by kthread.

Drinking Juice/Coffee Afterward: The base premise behind both of these seems to be that drinking lots of juice or coffee will speed up your metabolism and thus the processing of the alcohol. The problem with juice is that it would take gallons of juice to get enough sugar in your system to really change your metabolic rate—an already suspect line of reasoning since researchers in the 1970s established that drinking lots of juice slows down the metabolizing of alcohol. Then, even if the questionable trick worked, you’d have to deal with the massive insulin spike and sugar crash that followed—which can be just as nasty as a hangover. Hydration is important, especially after drinking it up, but juice doesn’t do anything special to help you.

Coffee fails in a related fashion. If you drank enough coffee to speed up your metabolism enough to effect the processing of alcohol you’d give yourself heart palpitations and the side effects of mega-dosing on caffeine would dwarf the side effects of your hangover. Even worse, one study suggests that coffee-plus-hangover is a recipe for bad decision making. Photo by chaps1.

If a glass of V8 or a strong cup of coffee makes you feel better/sober up then sure, drink some. Just don’t expect it to magically absorb all that vodka. Between the two, the V8 is the superior choice—coffee is a diuretic and light on any nutritional value, whereas your V8 is packed with vitamins and salt, both of which you could use some more of after a night of drinking.

Slamming Pain Killers: Don’t load up on over-the-counter pain killers before bed. Not only do drugs like Aspirin and Acetaminophen have short windows of effectiveness in the body—you’ll be asleep for their most effective time—but they’re hard on your stomach and liver. That’s not normally an issue when you’re sober, but now is the time to pay attention to those bottle-warnings. Acetaminophen is especially harsh on your liver—thus the big warning on the box of Tylenol about not taking it along with alcohol. Save the pain killers for the next day and only if you really need them—again, you need to let your body focus on purging the alcohol. Photo by DraconianRain.

What Works—The Night Before and The Slow Crawl to Sobriety

Just because drinking a gallon of orange juice and jamming pins into the cork from a bottle won’t cure your hangover doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Like we pointed out above, the only fail-safe to a hangover-free life is to drink little or no alcohol. For those times that a good time and a good bottle get the better of you, you can armor up with these tried and tested tips. Photo by glennharper.

Drinking Water: Water is a magical elixir that makes your body function. You can never go wrong drinking lots of it and it’s the absolute best thing to keep yourself from getting hungover and speeding up hangover recovery. Even better than just drinking a lot of water after the fact is drinking water throughout the prior night.

My unofficial never-have-hangovers routine is to drink a tall glass of water for every unit of alcohol I consume—a unit being one of the equivalency portions they teach in you in health class—1 shot=1 glass of wine=1 beer. Drink water frequently through the night, drink lots of water before you go to bed, drink more water in the morning. In addition to keeping you well hydrated, this technique also serves to regulate alcohol consumption. Would anyone really do 20 shots in an evening if they had to drink around 2 gallons of water to go with them? Photo by darkpatator.

Eat Up: Drinking liquids doesn’t close the valve in your stomach or jump start the metabolic process—one of the reasons drinking cola fattens you up so quickly—so make sure you eat well before you start drinking. The myth side of this tip is that food some how absorbs alcohol and locks it up until your body digests the food. The real reason is the valve in your stomach closes to start the digestion process and it takes longer for the alcohol to absorb into your system—a huge cheeseburger is a metaphorical whiskey-sponge, not a literal one.

A solid meal will cause your stomach to focus on slowing the movement of food and liquid through your body so the digestive process can occur. If you skip the pre-bar-hopping meal, the alcohol you drink is essentially boarding a speed train to your blood stream. Focus on fat and protein-loaded foods to provide a nice slow-burning meal that will help regulate the absorption of alcohol. Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography.

Don’t neglect a good breakfast, either. You may not feel like eating in the morning, but the last thing your body needs is you stumbling around like a zombie on and empty stomach. Mopping up the mess you made with a bottle of Tequila—just because it’s a lighter-colored liquor doesn’t always mean it’ll protect you from a hangover—is hard work, and you’d be a jerk not to feed the help. Get a solid breakfast with complex carbs and some protein—a case for a farmer’s omelet and some thick-sliced toast if there ever was one or perhaps a nice delicious bacon sandwich—to help your body power through. Photo by nathanborror.

How to Evaluate a Hangover Cure

We could write a book about all the hangover cures that don’t work and a very small informational pamphlet about the ones that do. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to debunk a hangover myth, however, and if you use our simple checklist below you can debunk myths as you come across them:

• Would I do this if I wasn’t hung over?: For some reason hangover cures always seem like some sort of puritanical punishment for your drinking sins. A good rule for evaluating a hangover cure is to ask if you’d do it under normal circumstances as part of a sensible health routine. Drinking lots of water? Always healthy. A little extra B-complex vitamins? Can’t go wrong there. Huffing the smoke of a coal fire? Doesn’t sound like a regular post-workout routine.
• Are the mechanics of this cure clear and scientifically-based?: You don’t need to have a degree in molecular biology or understand how the potassium pumps in your cells work to use this one. Question any cure that seems to have “and then… magic!” as a component. Nutritionists the world over will advise you to eat protein for long lasting energy—a plate of eggs gives you much more energy throughout the morning than a bowl of cereal, for example—so it’s not a long shot to see how eating a high-protein meal before a night on the town would help keep your metabolism steady. When in doubt, hit up Google to read up on the science behind an alleged cure.
• Will this, potentially, make me more sick?: You’d think this would be an obvious one, but given the hangover cures floating around it’s not. Drinking raw eggs, Rocky-style, sweating it out in a sauna, running laps, and mega-dosing on vitamins, are all examples of things people do to beat back a hangover that aren’t really so helpful. You don’t want to give yourself salmonella poisoning, or further dehydrate yourself with hard exercise, or tax your liver even more with additional crap to process out. You wouldn’t go jogging to “cure” the flu; treat a hangover accordingly.

Using those basic rules as guidelines, you’ll be able to discard hangover cures that are outright ineffective, will give you food poisoning, or worse. It’s no fun being hungover but it’s less fun ending up in the hospital because your friend convinced you that the perfect cure for too much Tequila would be raw eggs followed by a jog to a smokey sauna.

The question about hangovers was asked remotely by a woman sitting in a bar having a glass of wine. She said that she likes to go out with her friends every once in a while and have a couple of glasses of wine. But if she has more than a couple glasses, she wakes up with a terrible hangover the next morning, and is wondering if there is anything she can do to prevent this?

Dr. Oz had some pretty good suggestions as far as hangover cures, and preventative measures you can take when drinking to help out with the hangover:

Dr. Oz begins by talking about some things you can do the night before the hangover. While you are drinking, “you never want to have alcohol without water next to it, you need the water to flush it through your system.” So while you are drinking, try to remember to have a glass of water in between those beers, glasses of wine or cocktails.

Next Dr. Oz talks about the color of alcohol being a huge factor.  He says “the alcohol you drink should be the color of water, ideally.  Gin and vodka give you less hangovers than brandy and some of the darker alcohols.  This is because the darker alcohols contain more “congeners,” which the liver has to filter out, leading to worse of a hangover.

Lastly, Dr. Oz says on top of drinking light colored alcohols, and drinking water in between drinks, he says to try and get some calories into your system as well. So have some food while drinking that night.

Then he proceeds to talk about the next morning…

Some solutions the next morning are getting “some food in your stomach “in particular eggs are effective, because the eggs, in their yolk, have something called N-acetyl-cysteine.” Basically these give your body anti-oxidants.  “Those antioxidants are critically important to your liver that’s going to battle right now trying to cleanse all the junk in your body.”

And the last two things he touches on, Dr. Oz says that taking some “aspirin will help with the inflammation of the hangover,” this will help that nasty headache that feels like your brain is too swollen to fit inside your skull.  And “coffee is pretty effective, because alcohol is a depressant… Coffee is  a stimulant, so it gets you going again in the morning.”

So next time you are out drinking, give some of these suggestions from Dr. Oz a shot, and let us know if they work for you – Post a comment below.

We miss seeing Paula on there, at least she would be drunk on the show and give us something entertaining to watch. Now all we get is hung over, moody-ass Simon, and all he wants is another cocktail and a nap. Don’t get me wrong, its great listening to his mean comments to some of the contestants due to his nasty hang over mood, but I still think Paula was much more entertaining, slurring words, and laughing uncontrollably up there.

Simon’s new show starting on Fox next year called The X-Factor shows promising signs of drunk celebrities to come! Paula and Simon are to be reunited as judges on The X-Factor! Until then, I guess we are just going to have to be content with watching hung over, grumpy Simon and the other judges.

And if any of you see any of these judges out partying in your city, please post a comment below. We would love to hear what they are doing the night before the auditions! And even better, if you have any good pictures that you snapped of them while you were out upload those to our Drunk Pictures Section!

From metro.co.uk:

A disabled man from Darlington has been arrested after he gave a lift to a friend on his mobility scooter while three times over the alcohol limit.

Nigel Lee Drummond was arrested after he was recorded by surveillance cameras weaving erratically through the streets of Darlington at 8mph after he and his friend left a local bar.

But because scooters do not count as cars under normal drink driving laws, Drummond was arrested under an obscure Victorian law – which bans being drunk in charge of a carriage.

Police warned that, while mobility scooters don’t go very fast, they can still pose a hazard to pedestrians and other road users. PC Kevin Salter of Darlington Police commented: ‘He was very drunk.’

Drummond was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £65 costs.

Photo from metro.co.uk

From women.timesonline.co.uk:

Festive partying seems like a good idea until you wake up with your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth and your head beating like an African drum. But is there really anything you can do to relieve the morning after the night before? Sue Baic, a dietician and spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association, says that prevention is the best policy: “If you can dilute your alcohol or intersperse it with soft drinks, you will do much to avoid the dehydration and drop in blood-sugar levels that trigger the symptoms.”

She recommends steering clear of red wine — its congeners, the coloured chemicals, can worsen an aching head — and pacing yourself. “Try to have fluids, such as water, coffee or orange juice before bed and the next morning,” she says. “If you can face food, then eat some.”

Such is the desperation to find a hangover remedy, that this month a Twitter campaign has been hunting for a cure. If all else fails, go to bed and stay there until the world becomes clearer.

Milk thistle
Theory: An extract of the milk thistle plant — available as a tablet or a liquid — is thought to aid liver function and help the body to metabolise alcohol more quickly.

Hangover rating: 2/5 Milk thistle contains silybin and silymarin that have been shown in some studies to protect the liver from toxins and to possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. However, most studies have been carried out on alcoholics and there is no proof that it can help TO cure or prevent a hangover.

Bacon sandwich
Theory: It is the hangover cure for many — its smell and taste often prove irresistible. Tradition has it that the bread soaks up the alcohol.

Hangover rating: 5/5 A recent study at Newcastle University’s Centre for Life confirmed that a bacon sarnie can indeed provide relief. “Bread doesn’t soak up alcohol but is high in carbohydrates that boost blood-sugar levels and speed up the metabolism, helping to get rid of alcohol quickly,” says the researcher Elin Roberts. “Bingeing on alcohol depletes brain neurotransmitters but bacon, which is rich in protein, contains amino acids that top these up and make you feel better.”

Black coffee and paracetamol
Theory: Caffeine is thought to kick-start your system, while paracetamol can ease the aches and pains.

Hangover rating:0/5 Black coffee alone can make your hangover worse, according to researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia. Take paracetamol, too, and the effects could be deadly, suggest scientists from the University of Washington. Caffeine triples the amount of a toxic by-product created when paracetamol is broken down. It’s the same as the substance responsible for liver damage when alcohol and paracetamol react together.

Isotonic sports drinks
Theory: These contain tiny, easily digestible particles of carbohydrate that makers claim can help to rehydrate at a faster rate than water.

Hangover rating: 4/5 Dehydration causes loss of body salts, or electrolytes, including magnesium, potassium and chloride. “Sports drinks are probably among the best remedies as they also help to restore blood sugar levels,” says Louise Sutton, a dietician from the Carnegie Centre for sports Performance and Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. “The drink will provide some calories and can rehydrate the body up to 40 per cent more effectively than water.”

Exercise
Theory: According to new research from the Government, one person in five believes that sweating off a hangover is the most effective approach. Findings from a recent Department of Health survey suggest that 3.8 million adults pull on their trainers the day after over-indulging on alcohol.

Hangover rating: 0/5 No chance it will work, says Gillian Merron, the Minister for Public Health. “You’re not going to compensate with a workout.” Sutton adds that exercise will simply compound the body’s fluid debt.

Water
Theory: Drinking water throughout a drinking session and before bed will negate the effects of alcohol.

Hangover rating:3/5 According to Sue Baic: alcohol is a diuretic so many symptoms are linked to dehydration. If you alternate alcoholic drinks with water, it will dilute some of the nasty by-products of alcohol.”

Hair of the dog
Theory: Having another drink can ease you into recovery.

Hangover rating: 1/5 Withdrawal symptoms from alcohol do contribute to suffering, but drinking more is not advisable. “Although another drink might alleviate symptoms, you are really postponing the point at which you will feel better,” Sutton says.

Prickly pear cactus
Theory: Available as a powder or in pill form, an extract of this cactus plant taken prior to a night on the tiles could reduce the likelihood of a thumping head.

Hangover rating: 4/5 It could help, according to a study at Tulane University in New Orleans, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers tested 64 healthy medical students and the extract reduced three of nine hangover symptoms — nausea, dry mouth and loss of appetite — and halved the risk of a severe hangover.

Alka-Seltzer
Theory: The effervescent tablets contain aspirin, paracetamol and caffeine, and the idea is to take them when you get home rather than the following morning, when you might not be able to keep them down.

Hangover rating: 1/5 They can be helpful for a headache and to neutralise excess stomach acid. “But the main benefit probably comes from the water they are dissolved in,” says Sutton. ”They are worth a try unless your stomach is sensitive, in which case they could prove an irritant to the lining.”

Artichoke extract
Theory: Extract of artichoke leaves help the liver to process alcohol.

Hangover rating: 2/5 The journal Phytomedicine last year showed that a supplement containing a 400mg extract of artichoke leaf extract (such as Cynara Artichoke and Digestiherb) helped stomach problems, and there is anecdotal evidence that it reduces indigestion, an upset stomach and nausea. But not all experts agree and a review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal said that it does nothing to cure a hangover. A review of herbal hangover cures in the British Medical Journal a few years ago found none of them to be beneficial.

Eggs
Theory: Often consumed as part of the hangover fry-up, eggs are also consumed raw by some who believe a substance called cysteine helps to fight free radical damage to the body.

Hangover rating: 1/5 “I can’t imagine anyone wanting cooked eggs, let alone raw ones, when they feel queasy,” says Sutton. “Eating helps and the albumen in eggs could offer relief to the stomach, but toast and water is an easier option.”

Sleep
Theory: James Garbutt, a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina who specialises in alcohol studies, recently concluded that no hangover cure will work. So, why not crawl under the duvet and sleep it off?

Hangover rating: 3/5 In theory it will work; in practice many symptoms are an indirect result of a chemical called acetaldehyde, produced as your body metabolises booze. It makes you hot and sweaty, increasing your heart rate and making your stomach churn. It is when acetaldehyde accumulates that you vomit. But the metabolism of alcohol interferes with rapid eye-movement sleep, which means that you find it difficult to drop off or you keep waking up. You could try the Hangover Pillow (ruthwhiteyoga.com) stuffed with juniper, fennel, mustard and peppermint, designed to prevent a sore head.

Worcestershire sauce cocktail
Theory: Jeeves confronted Bertie Wooster’s hangover with a supposedly magic cocktail of raw egg, Worcestershire sauce and red pepper. “Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating,” Jeeves said.

Hangover rating:0/5 “I can’t imagine anyone being able to stomach Worcestershire sauce, nor having the patience to follow a recipe,” says Sutton. And eating a raw egg could increase the risk of salmonella poisoning. Not quite what your stomach is after.

Photo Credit – Peta Bee – http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/diet_and_fitness/article6966261.ece

From abc2news.com:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl’s dress taken from under a neighbor’s Christmas tree.

The child’s mother, 21-year-old April Wright, tells WTVC-TV the boy “wants to go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.”

Wright says she and the boy’s father are going though a divorce. The boy, found outside his house in Chatanooga on Tuesday, was taken to a hospital and treated for alcohol consumption.

Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Janice Atkinson says the incident is being investigated but the department declined to release the report.

The boy’s mother says she met with child protective services and was told she will get to keep custody of her son.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Phot Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rothwerx/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
Photo not related to story

From gizmag.com:

Beer connoisseurs can prepare to have their palates tested by an out-of-this-world brew from Sapporo. The Japanese brewer is launching the world’s first beer produced using malt made 100 percent from “space barley”. The barley in question is the fourth generation descendant of the Haruna Nija malting barley that was developed by the company and kept in space for five months during 2006 as part of collaborative research with the Russian Academy of Sciences and Okayama University – who obviously have their priorities straight.

Originally, the barley was kept in space aboard the Zvezda Service Module component of the International Space Station (ISS) for the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency in food in the space environment and is part of Sapporo’s breeding and research into barley and hops.

In a somewhat questionable move, Sapporo says it has hosted a range of promotional events that capitalize on space barley since 2008 in an effort to foster children’s interest in space and science. And if space beer doesn’t do the trick, what will? However, sales of the beer will be limited to people living in Japan aged 20 and above and all proceeds will be donated to Okayama University to further promote science education for children and the development of space science research in Japan and Russia.

Anyone wanting to get their hands on the space-age amber fluid will need to apply through a dedicated web page (Japanese) set up on the company’s website with 250 successful customers selected among the applicants by a lottery. Winning applicants will be able to purchase one of 250 limited edition boxes containing six 330ml bottles at a price of 10,000 yen (approx. US$113 at time of publication). Applications are being accepted until January 7, 2010 and the beer will be delivered around January 28.

Go check out the show for all the alcohol knowledge you will ever need, from one of the most seasoned drinkers of all time, Zane Lamprey!

Friday December 10th He will be at the Canyon Club , Agoura Hills
Doors 6pm, Show 8:00pm
$20 Advance, $25 Day of Show + applicable fees
Under 18 must be accompanied by a paying adult.

Check out ZaneLamprey.com for full tour schedule!

From charlotteobserver.com:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. Authorities have charged a North Carolina woman with selling moonshine out of her day care center. The Charlotte Observer reported Tuesday that North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement arrested a 57-year-old woman last week at Parkview Community Center in Charlotte.

Agents said children were in the day care center when they sent in an undercover agent to buy two gallons of moonshine.

The woman told the paper she was set up by a neighbor. She said she was just holding a package for a man in exchange for $80 and didn’t even know what was in it.

Agents also arrested an 82-year-old man and charged him with making the moonshine. Authorities seized more than 80 gallons of moonshine from the man.

BREAKING NEWS – WINE FLU PANDEMIC!!

I went to a dinner party last night, where I and other guests enjoyed copious amounts of alcohol. I awoke this morning not feeling well, with what could be described as flu-like symptoms; headache, nausea, chills, sore eyes, etc. From the results of some initial testing, I have unfortunately tested positive for what experts are now calling Wine Flu.

This debilitating condition is very serious – and it appears this is not an isolated case. Reports are flooding in from all around the country of others diagnosed with Wine Flu. To anyone that starts to exhibit the aforementioned tell-tale signs, experts are recommending a cup of tea and a bit of a lie down. However, should your condition worsen, you should immediately rent a DVD and take some Advil (Advil seems to be the only drug available that has been proven to help combat this unusual type of flu). Others are reporting a McDonald’s happy meal or a Double-double meal from In-n-out also helps in some cases.

If not, then further application of the original liquid in similar quantities to the original dose, has been shown to do the trick.

Wine Flu does not need to be life threatening and, if treated early, can be eradicated within a 24-48 hour period. Although the wine flu can closely resemble the symptoms of the swine flu, don’t panic, your symptoms will be gone in about a day.

From myfoxny.com:

(MYFOX NATIONAL) – Sen. John Kerry’s daughter, Alexandra Forbes Kerry, was arrested in Los Angeles Thursday on suspicion of driving under the influence, police told Fox News.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Norma Eisenman said Forbes Kerry was released on $5,000 bail but did not release any other information.

TMZ.com cited police sources as saying Forbes Kerry, a 36-year-old film producer and director, was pulled over in Hollywood at 12:40 a.m. (PST) after allegedly violating a traffic law.

A formal blood alcohol test showed a reading of .06, TMZ.com said. The legal limit is .08 in California, but drivers under the limit can still be prosecuted for dangerous driving.

While Forbes Kerry was busted by police, another woman earlier this month busted herself by calling 911 to report her own drunk driving. Mary Strey of Granton, Wis., cited and charged with drunken driving and operating with a blood-alcohol level of 0.1 percent or more.

We will drink to this!!!

From news.bbc.co.uk:

Alcohol ‘protects men’s hearts’

Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.

Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.

The study was conducted in Spain, a country with relatively high rates of alcohol consumption and low rates of coronary heart disease.

The research involved men and women aged between 29 and 69, who were asked to document their lifetime drinking habits and followed for 10 years.

Crucially the research team claim to have eliminated the “sick abstainers” risk by differentiating between those who had never drunk and those whom ill-health had forced to quit. This has been used in the past to explain fewer heart-related deaths among drinkers on the basis that those who are unhealthy to start with are less likely to drink.

Good cholesterol

The researchers, led by the Basque Public Health Department, placed the participants into six categories – from never having drunk to drinking more than 90g of alcohol each day. This would be the equivalent of consuming about eight bottles of wine a week, or 28 pints of lager.

For those drinking little – less than a shot of vodka a day for instance – the risk was reduced by 35%. And for those who drank anything from three shots to more than 11 shots each day, the risk worked out an average of 50% less.

The same benefits were not seen in women, who suffer fewer heart problems than men to start with. Researchers speculated this difference could be down to the fact that women process alcohol differently, and that female hormones protect against the disease in younger age groups.

The type of alcohol drunk did not seem to make a difference, but protection was greater for those drinking moderate to high amounts of varied drinks.

The exact mechanisms are as yet unclear, but it is known that alcohol helps to raise high-density lipoproteins, sometimes known as good cholesterol, which helps stop so-called bad cholesterol from building up in the arteries.

‘Binge-drinking’

UK experts said the findings should be treated with caution because they do not take into account ill-health from a range of other diseases caused by excess drinking.

“Whilst moderate alcohol intake can lower the risk of having a heart attack, coronary heart disease is just one type of heart disease. Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, is associated with high alcohol intake and can lead to a poor quality of life and premature death,” said the British Heart Foundation’s senior cardiac nurse, Cathy Ross.

“The heart is just one of many organs in the body. While alcohol could offer limited protection to one organ, abuse of it can damage the heart and other organs such as the liver, pancreas and brain.”

The Stroke Association meanwhile noted that overall, evidence indicated that people who regularly consumed a large amount of alcohol had a three-fold increased risk of stroke.

“Six units within six hours is considered ‘binge-drinking’ and anyone indulging in regular ‘binge-drinking’ increases their risk of stroke greatly,” said research officer Joanne Murphy.

Public health specialists warned no-one should be encouraged to drink more as a result of this study.

“The relationship between alcohol and heart disease remains controversial,” said Professor Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“While there is good evidence that moderate consumption is protective in people who are at substantial risk of heart disease – which excludes most people under the age of 40 – we also know that most people underestimate how much they drink. This paper adds to the existing literature but should not be considered as definitive. ”

In the UK, the recommendation is no more than two to three units of alcohol a day for women – the equivalent of one standard glass of wine – and three to four units for men.

The British Liver Trust said: “There have been several studies suggesting that small amounts of alcohol can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in men over the age of 40.

“But these are often misinterpreted by people looking for a health reason to consume alcohol.

“If you want to look after your health, stay within the limits of no more than 3-4 units a day for men or 2-3 for women and aim to give yourself at least two days off alcohol a week.”

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, agreed that the message from this study was not clear: “At the end of the day, you’re juggling different risks and benefits, maybe helping your heart or maybe damaging your brain and liver.

“The simple message is moderation.

“Stick to the guidelines, and you won’t go far wrong.”

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben30/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This could very well be the greatest accessory invented for the iPod yet. It is a portable breathalyzer for your iPod of iPhone! Not only is it fun to mess around with your buddies, but can let you know if you are safe to be driving.

From davidsteele.com:

Introducing the iBreath Alcohol Breathalyzer. It’s the ultimate iPod and iPhone (orig. and 3G) accessory that lets you take your own alcohol breath test so you can get home safely.

Hollywood’s A-listers have been among the first to purchase the newly available gadget to insure that their mug shot is not the next one to grace the tabloids and news reports.

Not only can this cool gizmo save you from career-ending embarrassment, it can potentially save you thousands of dollars in legal fees and jail time. And if keeping you safe and out of the jail isn’t enough, this clever & innovative breathalyzer doubles as an iPod FM transmitter that transmits your iPod tunes to any FM tuner.

Just fold out the blow wand and exhale into it for at least 5 seconds. 2 seconds later, this amazing tool let’s you know if you’re within the legal limit to drive. It even houses a timer that can be set from 1 minute up to 8 hours in order to remind you when it’s time for the next test.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.

The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.

Workers from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut’s floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.

The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.

Fastier said he did not want to sample the contents.

“It’s better to imagine it than to taste it,” he said. “That way it keeps its mystery.”

Richard Paterson, Whyte & Mackay’s master blender, said the Shackleton expedition’s whiskey could still be drinkable and taste exactly as it did 100 years ago.

If he can get a sample, he intends to replicate the old Scotch and put McKinlay whiskey back on sale.

“I really hope we can get some back here,” he was quoted as telling London’s Telegraph newspaper. “It’s been laying there lonely and neglected. It should come back to Scotland where it was born.

“Even if most of the bottles have to remain in Antarctica for historic reasons, it would be good if we could get a couple,” Paterson said.

She was inches away from touching the high voltage 3 bar on the subway tracks too. Look how close she comes to touching it!

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