That's Fit

If shedding a few pounds is on your Things To Do list, you may want to etch "Curb Cocktail Habit" in the line just above it, since cutting back on those after-work martinis may help the weight come off.

Downing drinks at happy hour not only gives you a buzz, but it can also be a buzzkill for weight loss efforts. Because alcohol can slow down the body's fat-burning ability and potentially lead to the storage of fat at your waistline, it's a good idea to keep the number of drinks to a minimum.

Plus, any person who's been out late at night, throwing back a few and hanging out with friends, knows what always happens next: pizza. Or whatever else is available at that hour. Alcohol increases appetite, which is also not a good thing when you're trying to stick to a specific diet.

All drinks taste better when you make your own straws, say the folks at thinkgeek.com of their DIY Drinking Strawz. Intended for adults, I imagine, these straws -- you buy the parts, then put together at home -- made an appearance in the April issue of kids magazine Wonder time. No doubt, this contraption could be pretty cool for the little ones in your life.

Wonder time suggests you use the DIY Strawz for this refreshing watermelon drink. Feel free to substitute another fruit for the melon if you wish.

• Puree two cups diced watermelon and two cups water in blender
• Pour into pitcher
• Stir in another cup of water -- or more to best match your taste
  
• If not sweet enough for you, add 1/8 cup sugar
• Chill for one hour
• Pour over ice and serve

Consuming alcohol can lead to weight gain. One bottle of beer contains about 150 calories. Have a few drinks a few times per week and your waistline may begin to bulge.

Have one or two small drinks per day and alcohol can lead to breast cancer too.

Monday, it was revealed that a large U.S. study is linking alcohol consumption to an increased risk of the most common type of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. The study is the biggest of the three major studies concluding that drinking and breast cancer risk are connected.

In the U.S., the 21st birthday is a rite of passage of sorts and is commonly celebrated with a little (or a lot) of alcohol. But when researchers from the University of Missouri followed over 2,500 students for four years, they discovered a disturbing ritual was being used far more often than realized -- a game called "drink your age." A significant number of participants reported attempting to drink 21 drinks (usually in the form of shots) on their 21st birthday.

It's a dangerous game, one that can lead to alcohol poisoning and even death, and party-goers may not realize the danger they are putting themselves or their friends in.

Parents and loved ones can send a gentle reminder to their soon-to-be 21-year-old with an e-card from the group B.R.A.D. -- even anonymously if desired. B.R.A.D. was founded by family and friends of Bradley McCue, who died of alcohol poisoning on his 21st birthday after playing the "drink your age" game.

Can drinking water be harmful to your health? Why, yes, it can be, say two kidney experts. Now I don't mean excess amounts of water here. I mean your average daily recommended water intake.

How can this be, you might ask. Clearly, water is good for the body. It clears out toxins, keeps organs in fighting shape, keeps weight off, and improves skin tone. Not quite true, according to a new scientific review published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

"There is what I call an urban myth that drinking a lot of water is a healthy thing to do and it leads to people toting around plastic water bottles all day drinking water," says kidney specialist Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Goldfarb began studying the benefits of drinking water because of his interest in how the kidney handles fluids. With colleague Dr. Dan Negoianu, Goldfarb debunked four myths.

• Drinking a lot of water suppresses appetite. Nope. There is no consistent evidence of this. "Because you absorb water so quickly and it moves through the GI tract so quickly, it probably doesn't fill you up the way people have proposed, nor does it lead to the release of hormones which suppress appetite as far as we know," Goldfarb says.
  
  

• Filling up on water flushes toxins from the body. "When you drink a lot of water you end up having a larger volume of urine but don't necessarily increase the excretion of various constituents of the urine," says the researcher.
  
  

• Drinking water reduces headaches. It does not.
  
  

• Water drinking improves your skin. There is nothing to suggest that it improves the water content of the skin.
  

Goldfarb and Negoianu say that some people do have an increased need for water, like those living in hot, dry climates, some athletes, and people with certain diseases like kidney stones. But but no such data exist for average, healthy individuals. Or long-distance runners -- over-drinking during races is worse than under-drinking.

Goldfarb says he's not sure where the eight-glasses-of-water-a-day recommendation came from. There's just no rational basis for it, he says.

Everyone has been to at least one wedding or social gathering where someone had too much to drink and pretended to have sex with a porcelain statue that resembled Napoleon. Okay, well maybe I'm the only one whose been to a wedding where that's happened, but I know I can't be alone in having been at a social function where someone had waaaaaay too much to drink. As evidenced by these people's behavior, getting trashed really isn't the healthiest choice you can make. However, based on research from Stirling University in Scottland, being a moderate drinker may have several benefits.

Apart from the cardiovascular benefits of drinking a daily glass of wine, it seems as though having a cocktail or two can also increase your status in the workplace. Based on the U.K. study, moderate drinkers tend to earn 17 percent more money than their non-drinking colleagues. Why? Because they tend to network more often and more freely, helping them get a leg up on their competition on the corporate ladder. Does this mean that boozing is the key to being successful? Not at all. Not only can excessive drinking do a number on your health, but it has also been shown in separate studies to have an opposite effect on salary earnings.

It's a generally accepted fact that women should quit smoking and drinking while pregnant. But it's helpful for dads-to-be to quit as well. Not necessarily because of second-hand smoke (though that's a danger as well), but mainly because when one partner continues the unhealthy habits it makes it all the harder for the other to quit. If dad continues to smoke and/or drink it's harder for mom to quit and she's more likely to pick the habits back up after childbirth.

Researchers studied hundreds of expectant moms' and dads' substance abuse over a three-year period (including pregnancy). Their findings include:

• 77% of female cigarette smokers and 50% of marijuana smokers used those substances to some degree during pregnancy; only 38% and 24% respectively reported cigarette or marijuana smoking.
  
• Overall rates of smoking and drinking declined during pregnancy, but picked back up within six months after childbirth.

Women drinkers may have something to lament from now on, if they buy into this new research that is! According to psychiatrists, wine causes more damage to the brain in comparison to beer. The study shows that this affects the hippocampus area for women more predominantly than men.

Wine has been touted as a beneficial drink for health reasons, so this could be seen as a bummer for people (particularly women) who may often indulge with a glass. So how exactly does it hurt the brain anyway? Researchers were able to study the brain and assess the shrinkage that this type of alcohol helped contribute to.

The hippocampus was shown to be 10 percent smaller in those who drank wine than the drinkers who preferred spirits and beer. However, I think it's worth taking this study with a grain of salt because the way they got these results was by comparing diagnosed alcoholics to healthy brains. So in other words, this references alcohol dependence and not necessarily people who are moderate drinkers. That's not to say a smaller scale association can't be made, but it's not worth panicking over.

Everyone has a theory on what it takes to cure a hangover. Some will suggest drinking Pedialyte or Gatorade to restore electrolytes and reduce dehydration. Others claim that the 'hair of the dog' method works best. And some believe that taking vitamins can offset the effects of alcohol.

Truth be told, there really is no such thing as a hangover cure. The Pedialyte/Gatorade approach is a good idea, as dehydration is part of what makes you feel so crummy. But, it's still not going to "cure" your hangover. The classic "Hair of the Dog" approach is not a good idea, for it requires you to keep drinking more alcohol. More or less, all you're doing with this method is prolonging the inevitable. As for popping vitamins, this won't really do much, either.

In pill form, vitamins are not absorbed very well by the body. And, since alcohol will only further hinder this absorption, your efforts at replenishment will likely fall far short.

The only "cure" for a hangover is to simply wait it out and be sure to stay hydrated. Oh yeah, or don't get drunk in the first place. That one works every time.

With spring break right around the corner, alcohol will flow like water on the beaches where so many young people will flock to like birds. Somewhere in the course of all that frivolity, binge drinking may occur. It's a topic that has been studied, researched and enjoyed by countless people. But what's the reasoning behind why people binge drink?

On some level, researchers have found that there's a self-fulfilling pattern to booze. For example, one study observed students who were given alcohol, and what they thought was alcohol. The latter was merely a super chilled drink made to resemble icy vodka. But the results showed that people who thought they were getting drunk (who weren't) still acted the same way!

Whether it was aggression or affection, the expectations behind the alcohol fulfilled almost the same results as the people who were actually getting tipsy. But this binge drinking behavior could be rooted in some people's need to take a mental vacation. For others, it could be a reason to act out of character. It's one of those questions that may never fully be answered.

Does two and a half bottles of wine sound like a lot to you? It does seem a bit high, but apparently, that's the amount you should be drinking each week in order to protect your heart, according to recent studies. Drinking two glasses of wine a day can help ward off heart attacks and, more surprisingly, will help make your heart healthier than those who don't drink at all.

But keep in mind, that's two and a half bottles per person, per week, so drinking that on Saturday night and teetotalling for the rest of the week is not a good idea, and won't do your heart any good.

People who identify themselves as alcoholics may have a new treatment option in the future. It's a drug which reduces the stress response of the brain, and it could lead to an encapsulated form of aid.

Drug-related treatments are not new for alcoholism. Traditionally, these target the pleasure response people get from drinking. However, this new option would target the stress which leads up to alcoholics drinking in the first place. It's worth noting that this finding, like many studies in the world of research, involved lab rats -- not humans.

However, the drug still targets the same protein, so this could be a viable treatment option in the future. By cutting the urge to drink (at least partially), alcoholics could be empowered to fight this addiction more effectively. Skeptics argue that this would not be a one-pill-panacea for alcoholism. Different things work for different people, so it will be good to see how this fares in larger, human-based applications.

Have you ever heard of the slang term Drunkorexia? I hadn't either before reading this article on CBS outlining the trend seen among certain women on the party scene. Apparently the ladies they are referring to enjoy a good night on the town with alcohol, however they eat much less beforehand in order to reduce the chance of gaining too much weight.

Even though booze carries its fair share of calories, cutting back on substantial food to make room for alcohol is a bad idea. Nobody is saying avoid it altogether, but is it really necessary to starve yourself in order to party? The article cites a statistic saying 30 percent of females who have alcohol problems also have eating disorders too.

If this term has any shred of truth behind it, then that statistic probably isn't coincidental. Of course, the issue doesn't have as much to do with alcohol as it does with an obsession to be insanely slim. Hopefully some day society will stop putting so much emphasis on aesthetics and concentrate on the bigger picture.

It's no surprise that exercise is considered healthy. In fact, that's a forgone conclusion to most of us (if not all of us). Although drinking alcohol can be healthy by many accounts, abuse of alcohol certainly isn't perceived as being healthy by anyone I know.

Would it surprise you to find out that if you drink and exercise regularly, you may be healthier than anyone who does one or the other? Danish researchers reported this week that performing activities can lead to higher health compared to those only doing one activity.

The research came to the conclusion that those who don't exercise or drink have a 30 to 49 percent higher risk of heart disease compared to those that exercise or drink -- or both. What is moderate healthy drinking, you ask? The researchers pointed to one or two drinks per day. I personally don't think that's moderate (depending on the type of drink, of course), but what do you believe?

If you were a cartoon character, stuck in a pile of snow, what would almost certainly be coming to rescue at any moment? A St. Bernard with a small barrel of brandy attached to its collar, of course. A good swig should warm you to the core, right?

Wrong, say the researchers behind the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine's look into this very subject. Evidently, alcohol is just about the worst thing you can drink when you're cold, as it decreases the body's core temperature and increases the risk of hypothermia.

What's more, it also reverses the reflexes that control body temperature. By actually reducing the body's ability to shiver -- which is the body's natural way of creating warmth -- alcohol also increases blood flow to the skin, rather than to the organs.