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Topics: Alcohol, Food and Drink, Women's Health, Health
Mia Williams
Topics: Alcohol, Food and Drink, Women's Health, Health
With Sober October in full swing, have you ever wondered how alcohol affects women differently to men?
Research over the decades previously found that binge drinking was more synonymous with men than women, however new studies show that the rise of marketing alcohol towards women is slowly shifting the imbalance.
Generally, men are still twice as likely as women to be binge drinkers, but it seems the same cannot be said for the younger generation.
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Instead, women who were born between 1991 and 2000 supposedly drink just as much as men born in those years.
But the problem isn't just that women are drinking more than before, it's the unknown effects that alcohol has on their body which is different to men.
After all, gender-based differences weren't really a focus in medical trials before 1990.
Talking to BBC Future, Sharon Wilsnack, a psychiatry and behavioural science professor at the University of North Dakota’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, commented on the lack of women involved in clinical trials and research.
She said: "People just didn’t think about women.
"To the extent that they did, they just assumed, well, you could study men and it could apply to women.”
Scientists have since discovered that women produce smaller amounts of an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) - which has the job of breaking down alcohol in the body.
Women also have naturally higher levels of body fat and lower levels of water, meaning that they experience a far more dramatic response to alcohol.
Dawn Sugarman, a psychology professor at Harvard Medical School and addiction psychologist, said: "That vulnerability is why we see increases in medical problems in women with alcohol-use disorders, compared to men."
It has also been found that women who drink excessively are more likely to develop addiction, among other medical issues, quicker than men. This is because of an effect called 'telescoping'.
'Telescoping' suggests that it takes women much less time to develop an addiction to alcohol than men.
Studies conducted in the 2000s which included brain scans of alcoholics, found that a woman's brain was more sensitive to alcohol than a man's.
According to Gateway Foundation, 'telescoping' means that once women enter into addiction treatment, they usually find that the psychological and social difficulties are more severe for them than men. This is despite having abused the substance for a shorter amount of time.
What scientists can take from this research is very interesting - perhaps it could be worth exploring how women’s alcohol treatment needs may be different from their male counterparts.
Please drink responsibly. If you want to discuss any issues relating to alcohol in confidence, contact Drinkline on 0300 123 1110, 9am–8pm weekdays and 11am–4pm weekends for advice and support.