Why DOES white wine send women crazy?

There was a time when an evening with friends was synonymous with a nice, chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (or four).

But as the years have rolled by, that crisp, glass of gooseberry-flavoured nectar has fallen out of favour.

'No white wine for me - it sends me mental,' is how it started. 'Nor me,' said another friend, and on it went.

In fact, over the last few years, nearly a dozen of my female friends have declared they can no longer drink what used to be our favourite tipple.

One was almost arrested, another broke her wrist and another very nearly got run over.

There are countless other tales of tears, tantrums and Tube journeys going disastrously wrong.

But what is it about the drink of choice for so many women that sends them doolally - or 'psychotic', as one friend confessed?

Is there something in the wine itself or is it the way we consume it that wreaks such havoc?

Firstly, different people react to alcohol in very different ways, Dr Sarah Jarvis, medical adviser to the charity Drinkaware.

'Women react more quickly to alcohol,' she explained. 'If you’re a sturdy woman, you might think you can drink any scrawny man under the table - but don’t be fooled.

'Even if a woman is the same size as a man, she will have more body fat and less body water.

'Since alcohol is only distributed in body water, you’ll have a higher proportion of it in your bloodstream.’

This, she says, may be why women tend to suffer from worse hangovers.

Indeed, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbi found that not only do women get drunk faster, but their hangover symptoms were more severe - even though they drank the same amount as the men.

Then there's eating on on an empty (or at least emptier than many a man's) stomach, which one study likened to taking alcohol intravenously.

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