Drinking alcohol while watching the Bills game from Highmark Stadium can put you at risk, so you may want to put the beer down for this weekend.

While you may have heard that a shot of whiskey or a glass of wine will warm you up, it’s actually an illusion, which is what makes drinking in the cold so dangerous.

Here’s why: when you drink alcohol, your blood vessels dilate. This causes more blood to rush to your skin. While it may make you feel warmer, you're actually losing body heat faster because your body heat is being pushed out to the outside environment faster than it should.  

In other words, body heat is not conserved, and that can be dangerous when watching a Bills game from Highmark Stadium.

Sure, it may prevent frostbite in some regard, but at what cost?

When the blood gets sent to the skin, it is taking blood away from other key organs, including your heart, brain, and vital organs. It can be extremely dangerous for anyone who may have heart problems. 

Drinking in the cold can trick you into thinking you are warm, causing you to remove layers and gloves, and thus increases your risk of hypothermia.

Snow increases the danger of this because when you get wet, you actually lose heat 25 times faster than you would when it’s dry. 

The safest option is to avoid drinking in the cold, obviously, but nobody is going to want to hold back the beers when the Bills advance to the Playoffs (fingers crossed), so you may want to use some of these tips when living it up this weekend.

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