Nevertheless, eating and drinking too much over the festive season can have a longer-term impact on the body than many of us might like to think, particularly on the liver. "There's been a big rise in middle-class, middle-aged women with liver disease because of the culture of drinking a bottle of wine a night," says Dr Andrew Langford, chief executive of the British Liver Trust. Rates of chronic liver disease have almost trebled in Scotland in the last 15 years, so it pays to know the risks and what you can do to minimise them.