Science Says Cold Weather Makes You Want To Drink, Here’s Why


Science has confirmed that if you live in a cold, dark place you will drink yourself into oblivion to forget that you live in a cold, dark place. According to a new scientific study people who live in colder climates drink more than those in warmer climates. The students at the University of South Carolina would respectfully disagree with this study.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh conducted a study to see if climate had an effect on drinking patterns. The study, which was published in the journal Hepatology online by Meritxell Ventura-Cots and Ramon Bataller this week, examined average temperatures, annual sunshine hours as well as liters of annual alcohol consumption per capita for 193 countries. The study utilized large public data sets, including from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

As temperatures and hours of sunlight dropped the consumption of booze increased. People may feel the need to drink more since alcohol is a vasodilator, which increases blood flow to the skin, causing a person to feel warmer. Not to mention the internal warmth you get from doing a Jameson shot on an empty stomach.

“It’s something that everyone has assumed for decades, but no one has scientifically demonstrated it. Why do people in Russia drink so much? Why in Wisconsin? Everybody assumes that’s because it’s cold,” said senior author Ramon Bataller, M.D., Ph.D., chief of hepatology at UPMC, professor of medicine at Pitt, and associate director of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center. “But we couldn’t find a single paper linking climate to alcoholic intake or alcoholic cirrhosis. This is the first study that systematically demonstrates that worldwide and in America, in colder areas and areas with less sun, you have more drinking and more alcoholic cirrhosis.”

Doctor Bataller was not kidding about Wisconsin getting hammered. In a recent USA Today study, 10 of the top 10 drunkest cities were either in Wisconsin or Minnesota. Let me repeat that… TEN of the top TEN drunkest cities were ALL in Minnesota or Wisconsin.

The study, which was partly funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, will attempt to shed light on alcoholism. “Knowing that colder places have more drink-related problems could be helpful to the efforts in these areas to determine better policies,” Dr. Bataller said. “If you have a genetic predisposition to alcohol abuse, maybe you should avoid super cold areas.”

Keep warm this winter with or without alcohol but please don’t keep warm by drinking like this.

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