Saluting the setting sun with soothing shot of scotch or settling your spouse-jangled nerves with a dry martini can be beneficial if you're drinking stops there.

If you choose to have a few more, your problems can be compounded if you're a woman.

Females suffer more intense hangovers than men, according to University of Missouri-Columbia researchers. And we all know that hangovers are not as easy to overcome as we age.

The finding that women are more likely to feel hung over than men "makes biological sense," says researcher Dr. Wendy Slutske. "Women tend to weigh less and have lower percentages of total body water than do men, so they should achieve higher degrees of intoxication and, presumably, more hangover per unit of alcohol."

The most common hangover symptom reported by the 1,230 subjects surveyed was thirst and dehydration.

Compounding the problem for older women is the threat to their hearts.

Female alcoholics who suffer hypertension the first few days after they quit drinking have lingering cardiovascular problems even after their blood pressure returned to normal weeks later, a Dartmouth Medical School study reveals.

Those who had fleeting blood pressure rises showed signs of high diastolic blood pressure and inefficient heart pumping in response to stress tests after a month of abstinence.

Unlike men who quit drinking, the women had exaggerated or sudden leaps of blood pressure in response to stress.

The test group sample of 32 women admitted to hospital for alcohol abuse and 16 female social drinkers were given a physical stress test in which they were asked to squeeze a hand grip and a psychological test during which they were videotaped defending themselves against an imaginary traffic ticket.

Those with withdrawal hypertension tended to drink hard liquor more often than those who did not experience the temporary bump in blood pressure.