New research finds that women’s health suffers more than men’s with alcohol abuse. Excessive drinking risks liver, brain and heart damage, as well as other health problems.
“We are very concerned about the fact that more young women are starting to drink in harmful ways, including binge drinking,” said Dr. Deidra Roach of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
The study reported an increase of 30 percent in women who binge drank between 1979 and 2006. According to the National institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcohol affects women differently than men. Women’s bodies have less water and more body fat, and metabolize alcohol in a different way. Women, therefore, are affected more quickly by alcohol and for a longer amount of time.
The National Institutes of Health estimates that of the 17.6 million Americans who abuse alcohol, 5.3 million are women.
“Because women are smaller than men…the same amount of alcohol will be more concentrated in a woman’s body than a man’s body,” said Roach. “This means when a man and woman drink the same amount of alcohol, in general, the women’s internal organs will be exposed to more alcohol than the man’s.”