7 Deadly drinks: Avoid these alcoholic drinks this Christmas to save your skin

The festive spirit quite literally shouts: Eat, Drink and Be Merry! However, some of our favourite festive drinks may be doing a lot of harm to our skin without us realising.

Alcohol has a tendency to dehydrate and may leave your skin looking dry and tight when Santa comes to visit.

Dr. Sam Bunting, a leading cosmetic dermatologist told Cosmopolitan, "There's no doubt alcohol takes it's toll on the skin, over the long-term heavy drinking can lead to persistent inflammation, fixed redness and broken capillaries appearing."

She also added that alcohol dehydrates the skin leaving it dry and tight, without any glow. And as people mostly have alcohol with salty nibbles it leads to facial puffiness especially under the eyes.

As alcoholic drinks generally have a lot of sugar they spike insulin levels and result in skin inflammation.

While all alcohol has its pros and cons, Dr Bunting has ranked the following from "least damaging" to "most damaging" for your skin:

Tequila

Tequila is one of the more skin-friendly spirits, it has very high-purity and contains less sugar compared to most alcoholic drinks, which lowers the chance of skin inflammation.

However it is only better if it is taken straight up, you have to skip the salt and lime to avoid breakouts. And don't drink it in a margarita.

Beer

Beer may leave you red-faced but it's not the worst option. The percentage of alcohol in beer is a lot lesser than other spirits, and beer drinkers usually savour their drinks which prevents dehydration.

Not to mention the anti-ageing benefits because of the anti-oxidants that it contains.

So maybe beer is not exactly the worst.

Gin and tonic/ Vodka Tonic

Both gin and vodka don't give such terrible hangovers and are also relatively low in sugar and salt, so as long as they aren't in their cocktail form they are not so bad for your skin.

White wine

White wine lovers we have some bad news for you, not only does white wine give horrible hangovers but it also has high levels of sugar which has horrible effects on your skin.

Dr. Sam said to Cosmopolitan, "White wine leads to cell damage and increased skin ageing. It has zero redeeming qualities and offers nothing to the skin in terms of health benefits.”

Mojito

Sugar in any part of our diet especially with an excess of carbs leads to systematic inflammation which leads to increased skin ageing.

The lesser the sugar in your drinks, the better your chances of not getting (as many) wrinkles.

Sugar also causes acne as it spikes insulin levels. Step away from the glasses my friends!

Margarita

Now here's the real devil, margaritas aren't just loaded with sugar but also a generous helping of salt.

Salt gives you the puffy face and sugar gives you the wrinkles, could it get any worse?

Red wine

Now this one will really hurt!

Alcohol is a vasodilator, which causes it to promote opening of blood vessels in your skin (explaining the increased redness).

However, what makes red wine the worst is the fact that it also has a histamine releasers which increase redness and flushing.

This is the worst for those who are prone to redness or rosacea.

Well, sorry to burst any bubbles, drink responsibly!