My days of partying with George Clooney are behind me
THERE’S no denying I love a glass of wine. I once spent four days holed up at the Hotel du Cap during the Cannes Film Festival with a selection of debauched movie moguls and George Clooney.
But now, those decades when any problem could be diminished by a vat of fermented grape juice are well and truly behind me.
When I hit 50, I hit a wall. A hangover would snake painfully around my head for 24 hours or longer. I wasn’t drinking more, but the recovery period had doubled.
Research shows these worsening hangovers are linked to age and hormones, as well as levels of hydration, stress and sleep quality.
The thought of an arid, alcoholfree future is enough to make any woman reach for the Chardonnay, but the menopause is a good time to learn to love your liver.
In perimenopause, oestrogen levels can go up as well as down. Your body tries to recalibrate by getting rid of the excess, processing it through the liver (already busy processing caffeine, chemicals and pollutants). Throwing in alcohol adds extra duress.
As the years go by, alcohol has an increasingly toxic effect on us. An older body contains less water to dilute it, and more fat (sometimes far more), which retains alcohol.
In addition, women produce less of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase than men. This breaks down alcohol and contributes to higher concentrations of alcohol in the blood.
There’s no question that a drink may exacerbate menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes, night sweats and lack of sleep. If you are feeling anxious and depressed, alcohol is unlikely to lighten the mood.
And we all know the general dangers of drinking to excess: too much alcohol is linked to heart and liver disease, stroke, dementia and cancers, including breast cancer — and these risks increase as we get older. Oh yes, and alcohol is really bad for your brain, both in the long and short term.
Thankfully, this doesn’t mean you have to become teetotal. I like the ‘no drinking at home’ rule, which guarantees your liver at least half the week off.
But sometimes I even break that. When I get home to Somerset from a few days working in London, the house is usually a tip. The children’s clothes are strewn across the floor, along with a heap of wet towels; the dishwasher is full and dirty; and chances of supper will be 50/50.
This is clearly a highly frustrating state of affairs — but one lovely glass of red wine, or a long, cool skinny bitch cocktail (vodka, lime juice and soda water), and I see my family in a far more benign light: charmingly bohemian rather than slovenly and irritating.