Ladies, don't overlook risks of binge drinking

Binge drinking isn't widely recognized as a women's health issue.

It's time for that to change.

According to report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, about 1 in 8 women aged 18 years and older binge drink – meaning they consume four or more alcoholic drinks per occasion, or drink so much within about two hours that their blood-alcohol concentrate levels reach .08 g/dL. It's a behavior that spans all age groups, income and education levels, and ethnicities.

“Binge drinking tends to be thought of as a young person's problem. But, according to the CDC, 70 percent of binge drinking episodes involve adults age 26 and older,” says Fonda Fraizer clinical director at MECCA Services, a substance abuse and behavioral health services organization with locations in Iowa City and Des Moines. “I think that's something that people are not aware off because we do think of it as something that affects college students and not older women.”

Regardless of age, alcohol affects women differently than it affects men, and research shows that women start to have alcohol-related problems at lower levels of consumption. It's true that, on average, women are smaller than men, and size correlates to alcohol's effects, but even a woman and a man who are the same height and weight will experience alcohol differently because physiological differences in the way they absorb alcohol, break it down and metabolize it.

“Men and women of the same size might feel like they can drink similar amounts, and in certain social situations, women may try to drink as much as their male peers. They may be surprised that they experience intoxication that lasts longer than and starts at lower levels than their male peers,” says Kelly Bender, campus-community harm reduction initiatives coordinator at The University of Iowa. “That's why the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's research-based guidelines for low-risk drinking are different for women than they are for men.”

The NIAA defines “low-risk” or moderate drinking for women as no more than three drinks on any single day and no more than seven drinks per week. For men, it's no more than four drinks on any single day and no more than 14 drinks per week.

Long-term effects of alcohol use may be different for women, too. According to the National Institutes of Health:

• Many studies report that heavy drinking increases the risk of breast cancer. In addition, research suggests that as little as one drink per day can slightly raise the risk of breast cancer in some women, especially those who are postmenopausal or have a family history of breast cancer.
• Women are more likely than men to develop alcoholic hepatitis (liver inflammation) and to die from cirrhosis
• Among heavy drinkers, women are more susceptible to alcohol-related heart disease, even though women drink less alcohol over a lifetime than men.
• Research suggests that women are more vulnerable than men to alcohol-induced brain damage.
• Heavy drinking increases a woman's risk of becoming a victim of violence and sexual assault.
• Drinking while pregnant can cause harm to a woman's unborn baby, and may result in a set of birth defects called fetal alcohol syndrome.

“I think one of the main points of confusion is we often hear about the benefits of alcohol on heart health, and while that's true, that's really within those low-risk drinking guidelines -- one drink a day, maybe two drinks a day. It's important that when people hear that message, they don't think that if a little is good, a lot must be better,” Bender says. “Really, a lot is damaging. And ‘a lot' happens at much lower levels that people expect.”

Learn more

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism offers research-based information on how alcohol consumption affects health. To learn more, visit rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov

This story originally appeared in the July 14, 2013 Women's Health special section