From immune system disorders to breast cancer, here’s how alcohol harms the female body. When Gillian Tietz began drinking in graduate school, she found a glass of wine helped ease her stress. Anxiety kept her up at night, she says, and she started having suicidal thoughts. Research suggests that people who drink to cope — as opposed to drinking for pleasure — have a higher risk of developing alcohol use disorder. And while every individual’s reasons for drinking are different, studies have found that women are more likely to drink to cope than men.
Within a year, she was drinking daily, couldn’t sleep and started calling in sick. For nearly a century, women have been closing the gender gap in alcohol consumption, binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder. What was previously a 3-1 ratio for risky drinking habits in men versus women is closer to 1-to-1 globally, a 2016 analysis of several dozen studies suggested. As the gender gap in drinking narrows, alcohol-related complications in women are rising.
“That’s when I got scared, when I tried to not drink and only made it two days,” says Cooper, now 30. That common image of who is affected by alcohol disorders, echoed throughout pop culture, was misleading over a decade ago when Cooper was in college. There’s a risk, inherent in this topic, of coming off like a particularly joyless Mennonite, and I’m certain that fate will be inescapable here. In the past I’ve criticized the CDC for telling women who aren’t on birth control that they shouldn’t drink at all, a rule I still think is too paternalistic. Just as the addictive dangers of Valium became unignorable, Eli Lilly invented Prozac. Though the blockbuster antidepressant was marketed toward both genders, “there were some explicitly gendered Prozac ads that had to do with pitching Prozac to help women handle the double workday.
Victoria Cooper thought her drinking habits in college were just like everyone else’s. Sure, she got more refills than some and missed classes while nursing hangovers, but she couldn’t have a problem, she thought. It can be tempting to shut down any anti-alcohol message with the argument that women should be allowed to drink heavily if they want to. Johnston told me she doesn’t travel to college campuses anymore; she gets too much pushback from students who say they have a right to drink, and no one’s going to tell them otherwise. In 2014, the head of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism promised an executive at the Distilled Spirits Council that it would not fund research on the relationship between alcohol advertising and underage drinking.
Women and Alcohol – From the Editors
A doctor may recommend seeing a therapist to learn alternative stress-management techniques or joining a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Federal guidelines recommend that women who want to drink consume no more than one serving a day (two for men). But from a health perspective, less—or none—is a better target, Patel suggests. Deaths from alcohol can occur swiftly, such as the sudden heart or liver failure of alcohol poisoning, or the car accidents, falls, or drownings after drinking too much.
- Within a year, she was drinking daily, couldn’t sleep and started calling in sick.
- From immune system disorders to breast cancer, here’s how alcohol harms the female body.
- So even as some women drink more, they’re often less likely to get the help they need.
- Even when consuming the same amount of alcohol as men, women are more susceptible to its negative effects.
- By her early thirties, she was downing up to eight tequila cocktails daily, several days each week.
Cooper plans to return to school this fall for a master’s degree in social work, with the goal of working to change those gender disparities in the field. Yet when it comes to prevention and treatment of alcohol-related health issues, “that message is not really getting out there,” Sugarman says. “From less years of alcohol use, women are getting sicker faster,” says Sugarman, of McLean Hospital. “That made the decision to quit really powerful,” says Tietz, 30, who now hosts a podcast called Sober Powered.
MORE: Alcohol linked to greater risk of cancer in women: What to know
A practical and extensive resource guide for women who want to understand and take charge of their own health and healthcare, presented in short, focused, easy-to-read chapters. Terry D. Schneekloth, M.D., a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist with expertise in alcoholism and addiction, helps break down some of the differences. Free standard shipping is valid on orders of $45 or more (after promotions and discounts are applied, regular shipping rates do not qualify as part of the $45 or more) shipped to US addresses only.
Or it might involve a referral to a psychiatrist, who can prescribe craving-reducing medicines such as naltrexone, disulfiram, and acamprosate. As Karaye’s study notes, though, these drugs—like many others—have primarily been studied in men, so it is uncertain 5 key differences between crack and cocaine how much they improve the health or mortality of women. Those who frequently rely on alcohol to manage stress or who regularly experience symptoms of overconsumption—such as lethargy or foggy thinking—should talk to their primary care physician, Patel says.
Men born in the early 1900s were three times as likely as women to drink in problematic ways; today, women are almost as likely as men to do so. Female college students now binge drink more than male college students do. Studies show that women start to have 2022 national drug and alcohol facts week ndafw alcohol-related problems sooner and at lower drinking amounts than men and for multiple reasons.3 On average, women weigh less than men. Also, alcohol resides predominantly in body water, and pound for pound, women have less water in their bodies than men.
So, you know, ‘Alert at work, able to do the stuff at home,’” Herzberg says. In the end, the gender ratio of antidepressant prescriptions was similar to that of Valium. In the early 2000s, Prozac’s makers repackaged the drug, literally, in a pink-and-purple capsule; rebranded it as Sarafem; and marketed it to women to treat PMS. In an analysis of two decades of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Karaye and his colleagues found that women’s alcohol-related mortality rate rose by 14.7%, as compared to 12.5% in men. All of these factors point to women absorbing more alcohol, and therefore having a higher blood alcohol content than men with a comparable dose of alcohol. Some 29.5 million Americans are thought to have an alcohol use disorder.
Sharp, ‘Off The Charts’ Rise In Alcoholic Liver Disease Among Young Women
When two people polish off a bottle over dinner, they’ve each had two-and-a-half servings. Now, as women approach parity in drinking habits, scientists are uncovering more about the unequal damage that alcohol causes to their bodies. Perhaps most concerning is that the rising gender equality in alcohol use doesn’t extend to the recognition or treatment of alcohol disorders, Sugarman says. So even as some women drink more, they’re often less likely to get the help they need. This trend parallels the rise in mental health concerns among young women, and researchers worry that the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could amplify both patterns. There aren’t enough studies on whether women drink more when they’re advertised lady-friendly booze, but underage drinking, which is better studied, does have a relationship to advertising.
Last year she tried to quit and was surprised when she plummeted into withdrawal. While drinking is still killing more men than women, the rate of alcohol-related deaths is rising faster among women, according to the report published Friday in alcohol and seizures can alcohol or withdrawal trigger a seizure JAMA Network Open. Dr. Schneekloth points to a study done on men that found that about 42% were depressed when they started alcohol treatment. After four weeks, their depression rate dropped down to 6% — without the use of any antidepressants.
Unfortunately, women are prone to several conditions that may tempt them to overindulge in alcohol. For starters, women are more likely to be depressed and anxious than men — and are also more commonly victims of sexual violence — and drinking can be one way that women cope with these experiences. One reason may be that women don’t always recognize how much they’re drinking, Patel says. An official serving of wine is just five ounces, but today’s large stemware often holds 10 ounces or more.