Over two-thirds of working women are resorting to alcohol to help them cope with the stresses of everyday work life.

According to the report in Top Sante magazine, many of the women are vastly underestimating the amount that they drink.

The survey was conducted on a sample of 5,000 women aged between 18 and 55, and it follows a report from the Office of National Statistics which indicated that a fifth of all women consumed more than the recommended limits of two or three units a day.

The magazine's editor, Sharon Parsons, said that she believed that many women were overdoing it simply because they did not appreciate the alcohol content of some drinks. She went on to say that whilst many women appreciated the risks from alcohol in the form of liver cirrhosis, she believed that other risks from alcohol such as cancers of the mouth and gullet were less well understood.

Meanwhile, The Times has reported that drinking may be the key to retaining your mental faculties in old age.

Apparently researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry in London have found evidence that moderate drinking can protect against "cognitative deterioration" in later life.

The research is based on studies of nearly 400 people in the age range of 65 to 74.

There was also some evidence that those who had been tea-total upto that age had higher losses of mental agility.

The leader of the research team, Dr Jorge Cervilla, said that ovcerdoing the alcohol also produced higher losses of mental agility