But even if you don’t have a problem with alcohol, it never hurts to learn more about what alcohol can do to your body and your life.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have created a great interactive website called  ”Rethinking Drinking” that’s definitely worth checking out. Aimed at helping people, especially those between 18 and 30, determine what type of drinker they are and whether they might be at risk of developing a drinking problem.

Rethinking Drinking asks (and answers) the following questions…

• Do you know how much US adults drink – and where you fit in?
• Do you know what counts as a drink?
• Do you know how many drinks are in common containers?
• Do you know why being able to ‘hold your liquor’ is a concern?
• Do you know the signs that alcohol is causing harm?

The site offers some great tools and resources such as the interactive worksheets let you do things like weigh the pros and cons plus calculators that can help you estimate drink sizes, cocktail contents, alcohol calories, alcohol spending, and blood alcohol concentration levels.

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C’mon, people, you know there is some serious partying going on at these things.

But who’s having the most fun? At one time, conventional wisdom might have pointed to the Dems. Not so much due to their star-power and celeb-heavy support system (though that surely helps), but because their convention was held in the high altitude haven of Denver, Colorado. Every fool knows that drinking in the thin air will lead to moments of tipsy table dancing faster than at sea level, right? In fact, it has been reported that the DNC attendees were even handed out warnings saying as much.

Not so, says researchers. Instead, in studies, there was little to no difference seen at all between the behaviors of mountain top drinkers and those more rooted. True, higher altitudes can play with your mind slightly in general, but drinking is drinking wherever ye’s glass shall be tipped.

As for who’s having the most fun…well now that Gustav has blown away and Sarah Palin takes the podium tonight, we’ll just have to wait and see…

Cheers!

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Happy Sexbolt Saturday, everyone!

I have a feeling that for some of you, hitting the bars and lounges is on your To-Do list for this evening, am I right? And for some of you, hooking up might also be on that very same list.

Well, let me say that it’s only because I care about you and your reputation that I’m informing you it has now been proven as a scientific fact that the oft-feared “beer goggles” are really for real. Really.

The scoop? When people have been drinking, others appear more attractive to them. And not just members of the opposite sex. Nope, when heterosexual subjects who had been drinking were shown photos of same-sex folks, they also rated those people as being more attractive. I guess now we know why Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” became an instant bar fave, eh?

While this info is not really all that surprising (considering t-shirts that beckon you to ‘Keep Drinking Until I’m Hot’ have made the rounds for years), it’s still pretty cool that the medical community recognizes this phenomenon and now we feel a little more vindicated for having succumbed to the force of the all-mighty beer goggle once or twice.

So have fun this weekend, my sexy friends. Just be sure you and your designated driver (and hottie-checker) work out some sort of signal if your find your eyes becoming a little fuzzy before a hook-up.

Cheers!

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Anyway, Texans may be the toppers, but Midwesterners aren’t far behind. In fact, Midwest towns capture close to half of the top 15 slots. Who else made the list? Check them out here, adapted from a Forbes.com slideshow (complete with awesome photos):

1. Austin, TX

2. Milwaukee, WI

3. San Francisco, CA

4. Providence, RI

5. Chicago, IL

8. Seattle, WA (tie)

8. Cleveland, OH (tie)

8. St. Louis, MO (tie)

9. Boston, MA

10. Cincinnati, OH

11. Pittsburgh, PA

12. Virginia Beach, VA

13. Portland, OR

14. Jacksonville, FL

15. Detroit, MI

Is your city on the list?

For an extremely detailed explanation of how Forbes arrived at these findings, check out the full article.

Bottom’s up!

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After all, when you drink alcohol you are depleting your Vitamin B. So what better way to get it back than in the product that’s taking it away. That’s the theory, apparently, behind Filipino inventer Billy L Malang’s Vitamin-B enhanced beer. Although not yet on the market, this beer won a gold medal at the 2004 Eurpoean Union sponsored Genius -Europe competition and was a hit at the recent Inventors Day Convention in Bangkok.

He claims that his is the first Vitamin Beer, but that’s not exactly true. Stampade Beers of Texas not only developed but also marketed their own vitamin beer back in 2006. Aimed at attracting the active, healthy consumer, Stampede Plus was always silent about what was in it’s drink, stating “…the government doesn’t let us tell you explicitly what the extra (plus) is.”

And back in 2002, the Scottish government was discussing the possibility of having brewers add the vitamin thiamin to beer, believing that doing this could to prevent some forms of alcohol-related brain damage. But nothing seemed to eventuate.

But here’s an interesting fact. Beer is already a good source of B vitamins due to it’s high content of brewers yeast. It’s just that the filtering process it goes through during it’s production, plus the alcohol itself, reduces the body’s ability to activate these vitamins.

So does that mean that home brew will be rich in B vitamins ?

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