How menopause can lower your 'tolerance' for alcohol

If you have started to notice that your tolerance for alcohol has changed during menopause, you're not alone.

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Dr Naomi Potter, menopause specialist and founder of Menopause Care, says: "It's something that women are a little bit sheepish to admit to, but it's still very common. It can present itself in a number of different ways, but most women report that their tolerance goes down."

But what are the main reasons behind this shift - and what can we do to manage it over the party season?

"As we get older, especially once you start hitting your 40s, pretty much everybody's metabolism slows," says Dr Alisha Esmail, GP and BMS-accredited menopause specialist at London Gynaecology. "So, the way your body processes any kind of input into the body changes, especially alcohol.

"Our body tends to break down the alcohol more slowly, it stays in the body for longer, therefore lots of people experience side effects such as feeling it more and experience lingering side effects of it for longer the next day."