With the festive season in full swing, sooner or later, many of us will be tempted to drink more than we should.

Before you pick up that first glass of wine, and your judgment starts to cloud, consider the words of Professor Jon Currie, chair of Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Alcohol Guidelines Committee. "From four drinks upwards, the risks of an accident or injury on any single occasion escalate quite dramatically," he says.

So let's examine ways you can monitor your alcohol intake, have fun, and still get the most out of the party season.

First, the technicalities. Under draft guidelines for low-risk drinking, currently being considered by the NHMRC, the daily alcohol limit for men and women is two standard drinks per day.

But what trips most people up is ascertaining exactly what is a standard drink. According to the extant guidelines, a standard drink is one that contains 10g of alcohol, irrespective of the size of the container or alcohol type.

Most people don't carry around apparatus to weigh the alcohol content of their chosen beverage, so, if you want to stick to the draft guidelines, how do you ensure you are drinking safely?

The answer is threefold: err on the side of caution, be well informed and be vigilant. For instance, if you're at a restaurant, be aware that wine is often served in 180ml glasses, and since it has an alcohol content of about 12 per cent by volume (ABV), that means a single glass of wine is equivalent to 1.8 standard drinks. So after two glasses of wine, you could be teetering towards risky drinking. It might be time to switch to mineral water.

Some bars, however, offer drinks in much larger glasses - up to 250ml - and fill them three quarters to the brim. When you consider that 250ml is almost equivalent to one third of a bottle, it's easy to understand why you can feel hung-over after just a couple of glasses.

And you're not immune to risky drinking if you're at someone's house instead of a bar or restaurant. The measures are not standard and the hosts are often more generous.


TAKE NOTE

Another factor that makes keeping track of your drinking difficult is that today's wines have an ABV of 12 to 15 per cent, which is higher than in the past.

If you're used to drinking wine from different countries, beware that Australian - and some Californian - wines generally have a stronger alcohol content than European varieties.

Depending on the strength and brand, beer can have alcohol content as low as three per cent, or as high as six per cent (in imported beers such as Stella Artois). If you choose to drink spirits, there's more certainty but you still have to be on guard. In bars and pubs spirits are measured in single units of 25-30ml.

FOOD ESSENTIALS

The way you drink can have as much of an impact on your functioning as how much you drink. Drinking with food puts a brake on the rate that your body absorbs alcohol - which is why many people become tipsy more quickly if they drink on an empty stomach.

It's no good eating celery sticks, though - you have to eat something with fat in it. If you pick up a small ham sandwich to nibble on as you sip on a wine, it's the butter and ham, not the bread, that prevents you from becoming light-headed. Making sure you eat enough is particularly important when you are consuming sparkling wines. They are absorbed more quickly by the body because your stomach classifies them as bland. This blandness fails to prompt the pylorus, the outlet of the stomach, to go into a spasm, as it would if you were to drink a more flavourful malt whisky. So the sparkling wine quickly slides through the open gateway into the intestines, which means you feel the effects of the alcohol faster. A malt whisky or brandy, on the other hand, stays in the stomach to be absorbed more slowly.

GENDER ALERT

Most people are aware that women are more susceptible to alcohol because they are smaller than men and their menstrual cycle may have an impact on how quickly one drink becomes one drink too many.

But another reason why women become tipsy at a faster rate than men is because their bodies produce only half as much alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), a group of enzymes whose main function is the digestion of alcohol. Because women don't metabolise alcohol in the stomach as well as men, it goes straight through the small intestines and then moves rapidly into the bloodstream and nervous system via the liver.

Small women who don't drink regularly are most at risk drinking during social occasions because it can take their bodies up to two hours to metabolise a standard drink, while a large man can digest the same amount within an hour.

Other variables, such as age, have an effect on a woman's ability to digest alcohol. A post-menopausal woman, for example, starts to produce as much ADH in her stomach as men do. This doesn't mean, however, that she can match a man drink for drink. Many women tend to gain weight in middle age and excess fat is poorly supplied with blood vessels so alcohol still reaches the bloodstream rapidly.

Ethnicity also plays a part in a person's ability to metabolise alcohol. Some people of Asian nationalities digest alcohol more slowly because they have a low natural production of ADH.

Furthermore, certain drugs - such as antidepressants, some medications for stomach ulcers, even aspirin - also interfere with the production of ADH, so always check with your doctor as to how much alcohol - if any - it is safe to drink. The time of day also affects the digestion of alcohol. The body produces fewer alcohol-processing enzymes during the daytime, which is why that drink at lunchtime has a greater effect than the one you sip at 7.30pm - the peak production time of alcohol dehydrogenase.

Finally, always be wary of cocktails that you haven't made yourself because those delicious fruit juices could be masking a hefty slug of alcohol. And that adage about drinking a glass of milk before heading off to a party or function is true. Full-fat milk really does line your stomach and slows down the absorption of alcohol.