The Hard Truth
Scrolling through news headlines recently, I was surprised to find that Americans are currently drinking more than just before Prohibition was enacted. In fact, overall rates of alcohol consumption have surged over the past two decades, especially among women. Binge drinking alone has increased by 17.5% among women but 4.9% among men since 2005. Given the focus on male drinking behavior in the media and around my college campus, such statistics blew my mind. In light of the sex differences in how alcohol affects the body, such news calls attention to a public health crisis for women in America.
During the alcohol workshops I attended with the rest of my class during our freshman year at Yale, no distinction was made between the male and female response to alcohol. Thus I was surprised to discover that women tend to experience a greater physiological response to alcohol than men after consuming the same number of drinks. This occurs for several reasons. For one, women tend to weigh less than men, and thus achieve higher blood alcohol concentrations due to their smaller size. But this does not tell the entire story. In fact, research has shown that there are significant biological factors that affect the ways in which women and men process alcohol. For example, women contain less water and more fat in their bodies than men. Because water disperses alcohol and alcohol is stored in fat, alcohol is not diluted in women’s bodies to the same extent as in men. As several studies have discovered, women also contain lower levels of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which is responsible for breaking down alcohol. Hormonal factors may also contribute to slower rates of alcohol metabolism for women. These differences make women more susceptible to a host of alcohol-related health conditions.
While I learned about how alcohol use can lead to liver damage and cirrhosis in my high school health class, I was not told that my risk of developing these life-threatening conditions was compounded as a woman. Alcohol-related cirrhosis has risen by 50% among women and 30% among men in the past seven years alone. Women are also more likely to suffer from other types of alcohol-induced organ damage, such as alcoholic brain damage and alcohol-associated heart muscle disease. Alcohol consumption has been further linked to a 30–50% increased risk for breast cancer. Women’s tendency to experience the effects of alcohol more rapidly than men makes them more vulnerable to other dangerous consequences of drinking, such as sexual assault and car crashes. I even found a research study highlighting sex differences in how alcohol impairs driving tasks, which may explain why women have a greater risk for driver fatality than men with the same blood alcohol concentration. Unexpected findings like these underscore the importance of continued research into the sex-specific effects of substances. Imagining other female-specific risks of alcohol use that have yet to be explored makes me cautious about my own drinking habits.
While I am glad that social norms for women have changed to allow their participation in previously male-dominated activities, the dangers of drinking for women cannot be ignored. I encourage you to check out a video created by Women’s Health Research at Yale that breaks down why this is the case. By continuing to keep an eye out for health information from trusty sources like this and sharing it with others, we can adjust our behaviors and guard ourselves from their irreversible health consequences.
