The focus of this section is on the research in women with AUD and starts with studies using conventional structural MRI to quantify regional brain volumes; also summarized are studies using magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging to assess the microstructural integrity of white matter fibers and finally functional MRI done in the task activation state. Other potential treatment barriers are a lack of childcare and concerns that children could be taken away. This large unmet need among minority women, which may reflect a variety of causes, must be addressed. A variety of factors might contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in treatment use specifically among women.
When Aragam and his colleagues adjusted for those factors, any protective associations with alcohol pretty much disappeared. If they can’t give up alcohol all together, women and men might see health benefits just from cutting down on their drinking, said Dr. Krishna Aragam, co-author of the recent JAMA Network Open investigation that found no amount of alcohol was protective against heart disease. Between 2019 and 2020, the rate of alcohol-related deaths rose about 25%, reflecting the “hidden tolls of the pandemic,” such as increased drinking to cope with pandemic-related stress, researchers reported in JAMA Network Open in May. For context, the death rate for all causes of death increased 16.5% during this time frame. This trend parallels the rise in mental health concerns among young women, and researchers worry that the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could amplify both patterns.
Emotional differences in drinking
She found herself surrounded by other women in their 20s who also struggled with alcohol and other drugs. That common image of who is affected by alcohol disorders, echoed throughout pop culture, was misleading over a decade ago when Cooper was in college. Though men are more likely to have a drinking problem, there are unique physical and emotional factors that can lead women to have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Below, Camille Kezer, M.D., answers questions about alcohol use in women and liver disease.
In Cooper’s teenage years, alcohol helped her overcome social anxiety, she says. “It’s hard to get out of that cycle of shame, drinking and abuse,” Cooper says. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can cause an array of physical and mental birth defects, and is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation in the United States.
Links to NCBI Databases
This is because women can reach a higher blood alcohol level than men of the same weight, leading to exposure of their body tissues to acetaldehyde and numerous toxic alcohol metabolites with each alcoholic drink 13. Having a healthy sexual function is crucial for maintaining a good quality of life. The term sexual dysfunction refers to any issue that arises during the sexual response cycle, which can prevent a satisfactory sexual experience from occurring 1. Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is a condition that encompasses dyspareunia, a lack of sexual desire, and disturbances in the arousal and orgasm phases 2. This disorder can affect the entire sexual response cycle, causing stress and interpersonal issues 3. The health effects for women can be especially concerning because they absorb and metabolize alcohol differently than men, so the alcohol stays in a woman’s body longer, increasing the risk of liver disease, heart disease and certain cancers, she added.
Ozempic has a surprising side effect: Drinking less alcohol
Alternatively, unhealthy behaviors could, in some instances, be effect modifiers that interact with alcohol to alter risk for health conditions. The disparity was attenuated after adjusting for the greater presence of hypertension, hepatitis C, tobacco use, and other drug use among Black patients. To better understand alcohol-related disparities and the epidemiologic paradox of greater problems despite lower levels of drinking for some groups, research is needed to examine population differences in health and health behaviors and potential interactions with alcohol consumption patterns. Reflecting core concepts of life-course developmental theory,46 both the age at which heavy drinking occurs and the duration of heavy drinking across the life course are relevant to disparities in alcohol-related problems. This makes sense intuitively, as the longer a person engages in health risk behaviors, the greater the chances of experiencing related problems. Also, certain age periods are likely to pose more or less risk for different kinds of alcohol-related problems.
Recent research calls attention to potential explanations involving the life course, differential vulnerability, and access to care. As noted earlier, this review reflects a predominant focus in the literature on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities. Future studies are needed to assess relevance to other disadvantaged social groups. Research from Sugarman’s colleagues found that women with alcohol use disorder had better outcomes when they were in women-only treatment groups, which included a focus on mental health and trauma, as well as education about gender-specific elements of addiction. Follow-up of a cohort of women with AUD at 3 to 6 years post–baseline testing after an average of 3 months of sobriety41 reported recovery of nonverbal short-term memory and psychomotor speed.111 Postural instability, however, was still noted, even after this extended length of abstinence. These studies highlight the selectivity of dissociable cognitive and motor processes in terms of time course and extent of recovery with abstinence.
- As part of a research study, Sugarman and her colleagues gave women struggling with alcohol use information on how alcohol affects women differently from men.
- Several biological factors make women more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol than men.
- This large unmet need among minority women, which may reflect a variety of causes, must be addressed.
- “It’s hard to get out of that cycle of shame, drinking and abuse,” Cooper says.
Dr. Grant has spent over thirty years researching the risks and benefits of alcohol consumption. These biological factors explain why women become intoxicated after drinking less and are more likely to suffer adverse consequences after drinking smaller quantities and for fewer years than men. Women have lower levels of two enzymes—alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase—that metabolize (break down) alcohol in the stomach and liver.
Moreover, women who drink develop a greater number of medical problems, and at much lower alcohol levels, than men. Women who consume less than two drinks a day increase their risk of death from any cause, according to an analysis published in March. In addition, increasing insurance coverage and access to affordable, quality health care for underserved groups, a goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, represents another crucial path to reducing health disparities. However, efforts devoted to improving health care access and quality will yield limited gains so long as stress and social stigmatization among minority populations persist, and profound differences in neighborhood conditions and available opportunities remain. These are the fundamental causes that need to be addressed to truly eliminate alcohol-related and general health disparities.
Compared to healthy women, women with alcohol dependency reported lower scores in all sexual domains 7. These results are similar to Amidu et al.’s findings and suggest that alcohol consumption significantly impacts sexual dysfunction in women. In 2011, Lianjun et al. reported that alcohol consumption was one of the independent risk factors for decreased sexual performance in women 17. Amidu et al. conducted a study evaluating six social and demographic factors (exercise, alcohol consumption, smoking, marital status, educational status, and age) as potential risk factors for sexual dysfunction in women.
Drinking alcohol while you’re pregnant could seriously affect your baby’s lifelong health, and the more you drink the greater the risk. The risk of developing these types of cancer starts to increase even at low levels of drinking. But even that may be too much for many women, depending on their mental health or solution based treatment and detox family history of drinking, Sugarman said. But those same light-to-moderate drinkers also tend to have healthier behaviors such as regular exercise, lower rates of smoking and maintaining a lower body weight.
