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Bogged by booze blues
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Women are more prone to the negative effects of alcohol than men
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TAKE CARE Women metabolise alcohol differently than men
One more drink and I'll be under the host.
Dorothy Parker, US humorist, poet, & wit (1893 - 1967)
You are a woman having a drink at a party, minding your own business. Several things happen soon afterwards. Guys hit on you, some try to ply you with drinks. Creeps hang around, waiting for you to drop like an over-ripe fruit from a tree. Getting a girl drunk to shed her inhibitions is not a western idea: it is something straight from our venerable Kamasutra. Guys still try it today because it works: once the drinking starts, men lose self-control and inhibitions slower than women. Why? Curse biology.
Women absorb and metabolise alcohol differently than men. Their bodies have less water than men of similar body weight, so they attain higher blood alcohol levels after drinking equivalent amounts. This is why current dietary guidelines recommend no more than one standard drink per day for women, while the maximum allowance for men is two drinks per day. A "standard drink" is one 360 ml beer, one 150 ml glass of wine, or one 45 ml shot of distilled spirits. Implication: there is no such thing as a safe drink. It all depends on the quantity one consumes.
Drinking more than one drink per day increases the risk of unwanted sexual advances, sexual abuse and rape. But that is not all. Women who drink excessively suffer more organ damage, trauma, and legal and interpersonal difficulties than men.
Here is how the cookie crumbles: Women develop alcohol-induced liver disease faster and with smaller amounts of alcohol. They are more prone than men for alcoholic hepatitis and death from cirrhosis. Having more than one drink per day increases the risk for breast cancer.
Women are more vulnerable than men to alcohol-induced brain damage.
For women, safe drinking is a mixture of common sense and self-control. Restrict yourself to one drink per day.
Drink on a full stomach, or eat something fatty while drinking. This will slow down alcohol's absorption from the gut. Drink plenty of fluids afterwards.
Do not accept drinks from strangers: spiking drinks with "date-rape" drugs is a feature of the pub scene these days.
RAJIV. M
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