Raise your hand if you're often tempted by "just one more glass" of wine? (Us too, babes, us too.) But now we might think twice before finishing the bottle after a recent study [1] showed that for every extra glass of wine you consume, it could shorten your life by 30 minutes. If there was ever a time to cut down on our wine intake [2], now would be it.

The recommended weekly allowance is five 175 ml glasses of wine a week, or five pints of beer. Anything over that and you're at risk of serious health problems, despite the fact that we're frequently told that red wine is good for us [3]. There's even been a study that suggests drinking champagne [4] could be good for memory loss (although we have bachelorette party evidence to the contrary).

It's not the drinking that's the problem, it's the amount we drink. We all know that we have a little too much sometimes, but repeatedly going over the recommended limit puts us at risk of serious health issues — it can put you at increased risk of breast cancer [5], not to mention strokes, and even the chance of a fatal aneurysm. By the time you reach 40, that extra glass of wine after dinner (two units of alcohol) could be as damaging for your health as two cigarettes [6]. It equates to losing 15 minutes of your life per unit, and that's quite a large price to pay. When it comes to your health and booze, it seems that less really is more.