Women Suffer More from Alcohol's Effects
Fewer drinks pack a harder hit on the brain

(HealthDay News) -- Though moderate alcohol consumption generally isn't considered harmful, heavier drinking carries behavioral and medical risks -- especially, it seems, for women.

Researchers have found that even when less alcohol is consumed over fewer years, it has a greater impact on the minds of women.

Alcohol-related cognition problems affect drinkers' "visual working memory, spatial planning, problem-solving and cognitive flexibility," Barbara Flannery, a senior scientist at the research institute RTI International in Baltimore , told HealthDay . "Cognitive flexibility enables you to know how to communicate differently in a business environment than you would with your friends."

Flannery co-authored a study on the effects of drinking that involved Russian men and women, alcoholics and non-alcoholics. In a series of computerized tasks, non-alcoholics tested better than the alcoholics, who had not had a drink in at least three weeks. The tasks included matching patterns in shapes, remembering the locations of stimuli and naming colors when confronted with contradictory information.

But women in the alcoholics group fared much worse in most instances than the men.

On average, female alcoholics in the study had used alcohol for nearly 11 years, compared with about 15 years for the men.

The study corroborated earlier research that found that female alcoholics scored lower than their male counterparts in tests that assessed working memory, visual-spatial skills and psychomotor speed. Other studies have shown that women experience accelerated damage to the liver, heart and muscles, compared with male alcoholics, the researchers said.

One reason, experts explain, stems from differences in the amount of water in men's and women's bodies. Not only do women generally weigh less than men, but they have, per pound, proportionally less water in their bodies than do men. Alcohol consumed by women, then, becomes less diluted, exposing the brain and other organs to more alcohol.

Experts don't know what amount of brainpower can be recovered if people get sober, Flannery said.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, moderate alcohol use (up to two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women and older people) causes few if any problems for most people. One drink equals one 12-ounce bottle of beer or wine cooler, one 5-ounce glass of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits.

The institute also suggests that people who wonder if they might have a drinking problem should ask themselves four questions:

• Have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking?
• Have people annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?
• Have you ever felt bad or guilty about your drinking?
• Have you ever had a drink first thing in the morning to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?

One "yes" answer suggests a possible alcohol problem. More than one "yes" answer means it is highly likely that a problem exists.

On the Web

To learn more about the risks posed by alcohol, visit the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

SOURCES: HealthDay News ; Barbara Flannery, Ph.D., senior scientist, RTI International, Baltimore; Matthew Torrington, M.D., clinical research fellow, Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, University of California, Los Angeles, and medical director, PROMETA Center, Santa Monica, Calif.; May 2007, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research ; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (www.niaaa.nih.gov)
Author: Anne Thompson
Publication Date: April 30, 2008
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