A new study in effect says drinking alcohol hurts women more than men: they can get hooked on it faster and suffer brain damage sooner.
Times Online reports:
A brain-scan study found evidence that women are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of excessive drinking.
The charity Alcohol Concern said that the findings were alarming in the light of reports of increasing problem drinking among British women.
Scientists in Germany carried out scans on the brains of 158 volunteers, including 76 alcoholic men and women and 82 healthy people. The alcoholic participants were recruited from a six-week in- patient treatment programme.The results supported previous evidence of gender-related harmful effects of alcohol, such as mental impairment, heart and skeletal muscle damage and liver disease. All are known to occur earlier in women than in men even when they are significantly less exposed to alcohol, Karl Mann, of the University of Heidelberg, said.
The findings appear in the May issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
The BBC adds:
“Women typically start drinking later in life, consume less…and one could reason that women are less affected by alcohol.
“But there is evidence for a faster progress of the events leading to dependence among female alcoholics and an earlier onset of adverse consequences of alcoholism.
“This suggests that women may be more vulnerable to chronic alcohol consumption.”
Education Guardian quotes an expert who helps put this into perspective:
Srabani Sen of Alcohol Concern said: “It’s important to look at this in the context of female drinking patterns. Drinking has increased a lot among women, and the number of women developing liver sclerosis is rising.”
The number of women drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week increased by 70% between 1988 and 2002. Women aged 16 to 24 are most prone to binge drinking, with 49% cramming their weekly consumption into one to three days.
According to Ms Sen, to drink safely women should not consume more than two or three units of alcohol a week. A small glass of wine or half a pint of beer is roughly equivalent to one unit.
Sen attributes excessive drinking among women to increased economic independence, the modern trend of delaying in starting a family, fewer social taboos and drink industry advertising which has become highly targeted.
Indeed, the role of advertising and breaking groups down into demographics shouldn’t be underestimated. The advertising associates specific images with a product that appeals to a given group. If you layer powerful advertising upon some social changes there can be unintended consquences. Also see:Medical News Today
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.