Just one or two alcoholic drinks can impair your balance, coordination, impulse control, memory, and decision-making. Too much alcohol can also shut down parts of your brain that are essential for keeping you alive. Over the long term, alcohol can increase your risk of more than 200 different diseases, including in the liver and pancreas, and certain cancers.
Binge Drinking
While many are able to drink responsibly, alcohol use does pose unique risks to all women. While men are more likely to drink alcohol than women, and to develop problems because of their drinking, women Women and Alcoholism are much more vulnerable to alcohol’s harmful effects. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to symptoms of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).
Is there a recent epidemic of women’s drinking? A critical
- There is evidence to suggest that the direction of historical variation inyoung adult binge drinking varies sharply depending upon which portion of youngadulthood is examined.
- In the fetus’s developing digestive system, alcohol breaks down much more slowly than it does in an adult body, meaning that the fetus’s blood alcohol level can remain high for longer periods.
- Gender differences in alcohol use, binge drinking, andalcohol-related hospitalizations have narrowed in adolescence and earlyyoung-adulthood (age 18 to 25) because drinking is declining faster among boys/menthan among girls/women.
- These studies are largely descriptive, with littlestatistical quantification of the magnitude of gender differences.
Lasting changes in the brain caused by alcohol misuse perpetuate AUD and make individuals vulnerable to relapse. For example, MTF dataindicate that in recent years, older adolescent boys were likelier to engage indrinking, binge drinking, and high-intensity drinking than girls (Patrick et al., 2013; Patrick and Terry-McElrath, 2017; Schulenberg et al., 2018). However, since approximately 2002, youngeradolescent girls report higher levels of drinking incidence (e.g.taking the first full drink) than boys; specifically, two studies found that therate of newly incident drinking among female adolescents exceeded that among maleadolescents by 2% (Cheng and Anthony, 2018,2017; Seedall and Anthony, 2013). Binge drinking is drinking enough alcohol to raise one’s BAC to 0.08% or above. Women typically reach this level after about four drinks and men after about five drinks in two hours.
Drinking Levels and Patterns Defined
- While there is no one-size-fits-all method for recovering from AUD, there are lots of effective treatment options.
- Also in this category are older adults, anyone planning to drive a vehicle or operate machinery, and individuals who participate in activities that require skill, coordination, and alertness.
- Women are also more likely to abuse alcohol and other substances in order to self-medicate problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress, or to cope with emotional difficulties.
- Because women become addicted to alcohol more easily than men, drinking even moderately can be a slippery slope.
According to a 2009 survey, approximately 47% of women ages 12 and over in the United States reported being current drinkers, defined as having had a drink in the past 30 days. Alcohol may also raise a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer. Each additional 10 grams of alcohol (the amount in about one 4-oz glass of wine) per day raises the relative risk of developing breast cancer over a lifetime by about 10%. NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D., said that as of May 2023, the institute is not aware of specific health guidelines on alcohol consumption for transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals. Because women tend to have less water in their bodies than men, if a woman and a man of the same weight drank the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) would likely be higher.
Alcohol Misuse
Note that studiesvary in the terms used for drinking behavior, the definitions of variousdrinking-related outcomes, and the outcomes considered. From each paper, weextracted the evidence for gender differences, historical trends overall and bygender, and whether the studies presented evidence for tests of gender differencesin the historical trend (i.e., whether the gender difference narrowed or expanded)in the historical trend. In adulthood, many studies found either decreases or no change in drinkingamong men across time, but steady and significant increases among women (Grant et al., 2017; Grucza et al., 2018; Polcin et al., 2014; Schulenberg et al.,2018). Two studies found increases among women in the prevalence of12-month alcohol use, binge drinking, high-risk drinking, and DSM-IV Alcohol UseDisorder from 2000 to 2013 and 2000 to 2015, when the prevalences among men did notchange (Grant et al., 2017; Grucza et al., 2018).
In addition, certain individuals should avoid alcohol completely, particularly those who experience facial flushing and dizziness when drinking alcohol. Also in this category are older adults, anyone planning to drive a vehicle or operate machinery, and individuals who participate in activities that require skill, coordination, and alertness. Plus, women have a “telescoping,” or accelerated, course of alcohol dependence, meaning that they generally advance from their first drink to their first alcohol-related problem to the need for treatment more quickly than men. Trends suggest that white, employed women are drinking greater amounts of alcohol and with greater frequency. Some of this increase may reflect a greater comfort on the part of women to discuss their drinking.
Megan E Patrick
Women are more likely to contract alcoholic liver disease, such as hepatitis (an inflammation of the liver), and are more likely to die from liver cirrhosis (a chronic disease that progressively destroys the liver’s ability to aid in digestion and detoxification). While there is no one-size-fits-all method for recovering from AUD, there are lots of effective treatment options. Some examples include behavioral treatments, support groups, and FDA-approved medications. NIAAA can help people find information and resources about AUD and treatments that might work best for them. Mental health and wellness tips, our latest guides, resources, and more.
As longevity increases and US adults remain healthier into theirlater years, alcohol consumption is increasing among older adults in part becauserelatively good health is required to be able to drink at all (Han et al., 2018; Naimiet al., 2017). Those with chronic disease, medication contraindications,and functional impairments reduce or stop drinking (Nandi et al., 2014; Shaw and Agahi,2012), and to the extent that health problems are delayed, olderindividuals may be able to prolong their drinking careers. Data from both NSDUH andNHIS indicate that historical increases in drinking in older age are more pronouncedamong women than men. The reasons underlying gender differences in these historicalincreases are unknown but important to determine.
Young adulthood (ages 18 to .
Certainly, U.S. women in their 30s and 40s are drinking more than inprevious decades, suggesting that harms indicative of heavy drinking will increaseamong this age group. Yet adolescent and young adult women are drinking less thanever previously observed in survey data. Accumulating evidence indicates that patterns of alcohol consumption are changingin the United States (Grucza et al., 2018; Haughwout et al., 2016). Per capita alcohol consumption has beenincreasing since approximately 2002 (Haughwout et al.,2016), and hospital inpatient admissions related to alcohol disorder haveincreased since then as well (Sacco et al.,2015). Recent meta-analyses of survey data sources suggest that overall, adultalcohol use, binge drinking (Grucza et al., 2018)and alcohol use disorders (Grant et al., 2017;White et al., 2015) are increasing, perhapsmost among adults in middle-age and older. In contrast, during this same period,national data indicate that adolescent alcohol use and binge drinking are decreasingrapidly (CDC, 2016; Miech et al., 2018; White etal., 2015).