Are Women More Vulnerable to Alcohol’s Effects?
When it comes to the many negative effects of alcohol use, women seem to be more susceptible than males. Women who consume the same amount of alcohol as males do so at higher blood alcohol concentrations and with more impairment. According to research, women are more vulnerable than men to organ damage brought on by drinking as well as trauma from road accidents and interpersonal violence. This Alcohol Alert addresses various characteristics that may put women at risk for alcohol addiction and looks at how alcohol affects men and women differently.
The frequency of women
drinking
According
to household surveys, men in the United States are more likely than women to
drink alcohol. In a survey, 56 percent of males and 34 percent of women said
they had at least 12 standard drinks in the preceding year. In the study of
drinkers, 10% of women and 22% of men reported an average of two or more drinks
per day. Additionally, men are more likely than women to develop alcohol
dependence.
Women
who are divorced or separated and who are between the ages of 26 and 34 drink
the most frequently. Women between the ages of 18 and 25 are most likely to
binge drinking, which is defined as consuming five or more drinks on each occasion on
five or more days in the previous month. White women drink more frequently than
other racial groups; however black women are more prone to drink heavily.
Metabolism
Metabolism
of Absorption of Alcohol is different in women than in men. Women often have
less body water than men of equal weight, which causes women to have higher
blood alcohol concentrations after consuming the same amount of alcohol. Further,
women are found to flush out alcohol from the blood more quickly than men. Given
that the liver is where alcohol is processed almost exclusively, women's bigger
liver volume per unit of lean body mass may account for this observation.
Effects of Alcohol
Consumption
According
to research, women are more likely than men to have organ damage, trauma, and
interpersonal and legal issues as a result of drinking.
Harm to Liver
Women
have alcohol-induced liver damage at a slower rate and with less alcohol use
than males. Women also have a higher risk than men of contracting alcoholic
hepatitis and passing away from cirrhosis. According to studies on animals, the
female reproductive hormone estrogen may have physiological consequences that
raise women's risk for liver injury.
Brain Injury
According
to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain, women may be more prone
than men to developing alcohol-related brain damage. Researchers used MRI to
discover that alcoholic women had significantly smaller brain volumes than
non-alcoholic women and alcoholic males in a region of the brain responsible
for coordinating several different brain activities. Even after accounting for
the head size of the measures, these discrepancies were still substantial. In
contrast, alcoholic and nonalcoholic men showed a substantial difference in
metabolic energy usage in particular brain regions, but alcoholic and
nonalcoholic women showed no such difference. These findings do not support the
notion that women are more susceptible to the effects of alcohol on the brain.
However, compared to the study's male alcoholics, female alcoholics
reported less extreme alcohol usage.
Heart illness
Alcohol
Alert No. 45, "Alcohol and Coronary
Heart Disease," discusses how men and women who drink one or two
alcoholic drinks per day had a lower death rate from coronary heart disease
(such as heart attacks) than heavier drinkers and abstainers. Research
indicates that despite women's higher rates of heavy drinking, men and women
experience equivalent rates of alcohol-related cardiac muscle damage (also
known as cardiomyopathy).
Despite
women's 60 percent lower lifetime alcohol usage, research shows equal risk of
alcohol-associated cardiac muscle illness (also known as cardiomyopathy) for
both sexes among heavier drinkers.
Ovarian cancer
Although
one recent study indicated no increased risk of breast cancer related to
intake of up to one drink per day, the maximum drinking amount reported by the
majority of women, many studies indicate that moderate to heavy alcohol
consumption raises the risk for breast cancer.
Victimization via
violence
In
a poll of female college students, it was discovered that there was a strong
correlation between the amount of alcohol the respondents claimed to consume
each week and their experiences of sexual assault. Another study discovered
that female high school students who had consumed alcohol in the previous year
were more likely to experience relationship
violence (such as pushing, kicking, or punching) than non-drinking peers.
It
has been discovered that first-year aggressiveness among newlyweds is predicted
by a history of excessive premarital drinking by both partners. Regardless of
the husbands' drinking levels,
problem drinking by wives has been connected in certain studies to
husband-to-wife hostility.
Traffic collisions
Women
have a higher relative risk of driving fatalities than males, even though they are
less likely than men to drive after drinking and to be involved in fatal
alcohol-related accidents. There may be gender disparities in how alcohol
impacts how well people do driving activities, according to laboratory
investigations of how it affects responding to visual cues and other tasks.
Because
they tend to take fewer risks than males do, women may have lower rates of
drinking and driving. Additionally, women are less likely to think that
drinking and driving is appropriate to conduct. In a 1990 national household
survey, 17 percent of women and 27 percent of men believed that having one or
two beers before driving was acceptable. However, the number of female drivers
engaged in deadly collisions is rising. Compared to 13 percent in 1986 and 12
percent in 1980, female drivers made up 16 percent of all drivers involved in
fatal crashes caused by alcohol in 1996.
Are Men Less Susceptible
than Women to the Effects of Alcohol?
The
alcohol research community has started to acknowledge the significance of studying
gender differences in how alcohol is used, in the effects of alcohol use, and
in the emergence of alcohol dependency or alcohol addiction.
This is evidenced by the variety of information included in this Alcohol Alert.
Women continue to be more vulnerable than males to some major medical effects
of alcohol use, such as liver, brain, and heart damage, even when both genders
drink at the same rate. We are aware that there are gender-related differences
in metabolism that contribute to some of this risk; however, it is also
possible that these differences are also present in brain chemistry, genetic
risk factors, or other unidentified variables. The better job we can do to
prevent and manage such problems in all groups, the more research can tell us
about gender-related features of alcohol-related disorders, not only what they
are but why.
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Contributed By:- Dr (Prof) R K Suri Clinical
Psychologist & Ms. Aditi Bharadwaj
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