The gender disparities in alcohol-related health risks

Health complications associated with drinking alcohol rose among women during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research recently highlighted by The New York Times.

“Researchers found that during the first year and a half of the coronavirus pandemic, women ages 40 to 64 were significantly more likely than expected to experience serious complications like alcohol-related cardiovascular and liver disease, as well as severe withdrawal,” the Times reported.

In general, alcohol, which has long caused more problems among men than women, appears to be doing an increasing amount of damage on women in the U.S., according to the new study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other studies highlighted below.

What risks are associated with alcohol use?

Although men continue to die more often than women from alcohol-related causes, the rate of deaths among women is increasing at a more rapid pace, according to The New York Times.

“The gap is narrowing,” said Dr. Bryant Shuey, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, to the Times.

Shuey is the lead author of the new study, which found that, from April 2020 to September 2021, women between the ages of 40 and 64 “experienced complications from alcohol-related liver disease ... at higher rates than researchers predicted,” the Times reported.

“Rates of alcohol-related complications during the pandemic were also higher than predicted among men ages 40 to 64, but those increases were not statistically significant,” the article said.

Even before the pandemic, women were at an increased risk of some drinking-related issues due to differences in how men and women process alcohol.

“After drinking the same amount of alcohol, women tend to have higher blood alcohol levels than men, and the immediate effects of alcohol usually occur more quickly and last longer in women than men. These differences make women more susceptible to the long-term negative health effects of alcohol compared with men,” per the CDC.

According to a study previously highlighted by the Deseret News, young and middle-aged women who consume more than one alcoholic beverage per day are at a higher risk of developing coronary heart disease than those who drink less.

“When it comes to binge drinking, both men and women with excess alcohol consumption had a higher risk of heart disease,” said Dr. Jamal Rana, a cardiologist and co-author of the study, in a statement. “For women, we find consistently higher risk even without binge drinking. I wasn’t expecting these results among women in this lower age group because we usually see increased risk for heart disease among older women. It was definitely surprising.”

Men and women drink differently — and face different risks

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men and women who drink alcohol face different risks, in part because of the different ways they drink.

• Almost 58% of men in research highlighted by the CDC said they’d consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, compared to 49% of women.

• Around 1 in 5 men binge drink, but just 13% of women say they do the same.

• Hospitalization rates due to alcohol-related issues are higher among men than women.

• Men account for about two-thirds of the approximately 120,000 deaths related to excessive drinking that take place in the U.S. each year.

• Among men and women who have been involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes, men are 50% more likely than women to have been intoxicated.

• Men are more than three times more likely than women to die by suicide, and they’re more likely than women to drink alcohol before dying by suicide.