Advice for young women about alcohol, safety and health, including advice if you are pregnant or trying to conceive.
Drinking too much can affect your safety, your health and your looks.
Know Your Limits
A significant and increasing minority of young women are drinking to excess - putting yourselves at risk in all sorts of ways.
Watch a Video... Recommended Alcohol Units for Women (go to the NHS website) - if women regularly exceed two to three units a day, it could add up to a serious health problem. Find out how many units are in your drink.
To Watch Your Weight, Watch Your Drinking
Remember that drinking too much will do nothing for your looks. Drinking a lot may make you feel incredibly attractive. Unfortunately, it has just the opposite effect.
Alcohol is high in calories. A pint of beer or a couple of glasses of wine are about the same as a bar of chocolate. A standard 175ml serving of white wine has the same number of calories as a packet of crisps. A pint of cider contains the same number of calories as a slice of cake.
Alcohol also stimulates your appetite while reducing your self-control, so you are more likely to binge eat if you binge drink.
Stay Looking Good
Heavy drinkers can also look forward to dry skin, broken veins, bloodshot eyes and bad smell. You are much more likely to get bruises and scarring too - in accidents or fights.
All that is before you even consider the risks to your health. Department of Health statistics show one in every 11 women is putting themselves at risk by binge drinking more than six units of alcohol in a single night - the equivalent of almost a bottle of wine - at least once a week.
Alcohol and Pregnancy
If you are pregnant or trying to conceive, you should not drink any alcohol at all, to avoid risk to your baby. If you do choose to drink, to protect the baby you should not drink more than 1-2 units of alcohol once or twice a week and should not get drunk.
To find out more, either go to Alcohol and Pregnancy on the Drinkaware website, or download the NHS advice leaflet below.
