Sonya Collins
As you add more
candles to your birthday cakes, you may notice that your organs don’t work as
efficiently as they once did. Your balance might not be as good, and your
response time may not be as quick. Perhaps you have more aches and pains than
you did last year.
Just like your
body inevitably changes with age, your drinking habits most likely need
adjustments, too. That’s because with increasing age, “our bodies become more
sensitive to the effects of alcohol,” says Kenneth Koncilja, M.D., an internal
medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic. Plus, accumulating research finds that
drinking alcohol comes with some serious health risks, particularly for older
adults.
Here are seven
reasons why doctors and public health experts say age and alcohol don’t mix.
1. It takes less
to get drunk
Your liver
processes alcohol, and like the rest of your body, this organ isn’t getting any
younger. That’s a big reason an aging body becomes more sensitive to alcohol.
“We also have
changes in our body composition as we age,” says Lauren Kelly, M.D., an
assistant professor in the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “We’re made up of
less water and more fat.”
That reduction
in the body’s natural water content, in part because water-retaining muscle
tissue shrinks, makes older people more prone to dehydration and more likely to
feel drunker, quicker.
“As you age, you
get a higher blood alcohol concentration — what they measure on a breathalyzer
— than a younger person who drank the same amount,” Koncilja says. And that
means you can get hit with all the side effects in fewer sips.
“That can
include cognitive effects, sedative effects — like how you get sleepy with
alcohol — effects on balance and coordination, raising your risk for falls,” Koncilja adds.
It can also include effects on attention and driving skills, he says.
2. Drinking can
increase your risk of disease and death
That drunk or
tipsy feeling should clear up by the next day, maybe leaving you with a
hangover. But the consequences of consuming alcohol can extend beyond that.
A new advisory
from United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D., warns about the direct
link between alcohol consumption and cancer.
Alcohol is the
third leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S., the advisory says, and
drinking it increases a person's risk for seven types of cancer, including
breast, colorectal, esophageal, liver, mouth, throat and larynx. When it comes
to breast cancer, Murthy notes that more than 16 percent of cases in the U.S.
are attributable to alcohol consumption.
“Alcohol is a
well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000
cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States —
greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in
the U.S. — yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said
in a news release. In the advisory, he outlines recommendations to increase
awareness of the health risks, including a call for warning labels on beverages
that contain alcohol.
In addition to
this latest advisory, a recent study of more than 135,000 older adults,
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that even
as little as one drink a day raises the risk of death by any cause for older
adults with pre-existing conditions or low socioeconomic status. And no one,
regardless of health or socioeconomic status, was immune to the effects of more
than one drink a day.
In the study,
those who had more than one drink a day had higher odds of death for any
reason. Moderate drinkers (about 1.5 to 2.75 drinks a day for men and .75 to
1.5 drinks a day for women) also had a higher risk of cancer death. Heavy
drinkers faced greater odds of both cancer- and heart-related death.
It’s important
to remember, Koncilja says, what “one drink” really is: “It’s
so easy to fall into that trap of thinking you’re only drinking
one glass of wine. I don’t know how much people pour, but I don’t
pour just five ounces."
The definition
of one drink is:
- Beer and wine coolers: 12 ounces
- Wine: 5 ounces
- Liquor: 1.5 ounces
3. Alcohol can
worsen other chronic diseases
If you already
have a chronic health condition, drinking won’t do you any favors there either.
“Older adults
have higher rates of chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure and
diabetes, and combining that with alcohol increases risk for different problems
related to those conditions,” Kelly says.
Maintaining a
healthy weight is key to preventing most of the chronic diseases that become
more common as you age. This, of course, becomes more challenging after age 50
as your metabolism starts to slow down. Most booze is high in calories and
carbs — the perfect formula to derail any weight management plan.
“If you’re
talking about having a healthy glycemic index and a low-carb lifestyle, alcohol
doesn’t fit in,” Koncilja says.
Given its high
calorie and carbohydrate content, alcohol and diabetes don’t mix either.
Whether you are living with diabetes or trying to prevent it, heavy drinking —
more than three drinks a day or seven a week — will throw you off course.
Drinking too
much can raise your blood pressure, too, making it especially risky for people
who already have hypertension. Once blood pressure goes up, so does the risk
for heart attack and stroke. In fact, heavy drinking both raises risk for heart
attack and stroke on its own and also indirectly by raising blood pressure.
4. Booze is bad
for your bones
Alcohol can
wreak havoc on your bones, too.
Your risk for
osteoporosis — thinning, brittle, porous bones that break easily — increases
with age. Calcium helps keep them strong, but too much drinking prevents your
bones from absorbing this essential mineral.
And there’s
more. The older you get, the more likely you are to fall, which can be
catastrophic if you’ve got brittle bones. Even sober, older adults are more
prone to falls, so knocking back a few drinks can get extra dangerous. What
might have been a tipsy stumble when you were younger, could become a
hip-breaking disaster.
5. Alcohol can
make you more susceptible to pain
As you get
older, you’re more likely to live with chronic pain and you may be more
susceptible to depression. While either one of these conditions may make you
want to pour yourself a drink, think twice before you do.
“Alcohol is a
facilitator of chronic pain,” Kelly says. “It can make people more sensitive to
pain.”
Alcohol plays a
similar game of tug of war with depression and anxiety.
“A lot of adults
50 and up are caring for their children and their parents,” Koncilija says.
“Alcohol is an easy way to cope with the pressure, but it’s not a healthy way.”
Heavy drinkers
are more likely to have anxiety and depression than people who drink less. For
some, it may be that depression and anxiety drive them to drink. For others,
drinking too much may lead to depression and anxiety.
6. Drinking can
disrupt your sleep
When you throw
sleep troubles into the mix, you get a really tangled web.
Falling asleep
and staying asleep become more challenging with age. Sure, a nightcap may help
you relax and drift off, but as soon as the booze is through your system,
you’re likely to wake up and struggle to get back to sleep.
“Drinking
decreases REM sleep,” Kelly says, “which is that deep, restorative sleep.”
Poor sleep can
exacerbate or raise your risk for a number of health conditions, including
obesity, chronic pain, depression and dementia. What’s more, many of those
conditions can keep you up at night, too. Alcohol only makes matters worse.
7. Alcohol can
mess with your meds
Since we tend to
accumulate more diagnoses as we get older, we often accumulate more
prescriptions as we age. A report from the Lown Institute found that nearly
half of older adults take five or more prescription drugs — and a lot of them
may not go well with alcohol.
With some
medications, even a sip of alcohol is a no-no. With others, taking the
medication too soon before or after a drink could put too much stress on your
liver or cause sedation. The interactions that alcohol can have with
medications vary greatly from one drug to the next and may also depend on your
individual health.
It’s crucial you
ask your doctor or pharmacist whether there are any risks to drinking while
taking your specific medications.
If you want to
cut back
If you’re
clocking more than seven drinks a week or more than three on any given day,
doctors and health experts recommend changing your habits. Even if you haven’t
hit that upper limit, you could benefit from drinking less as you get older. According to the World Health Organization,
no level of alcohol consumption is considered safe.
If you want to
limit your drinking and you don’t know how, tell a friend or family member.
“The more you talk about it, the more likely you are to hold yourself
accountable to habit changes,” Koncilja says.
And if you find
it too difficult to stop drinking on your own, your doctor is there to help.
“When people are
struggling with their alcohol use, there are really helpful medications that
doctors can prescribe,” Kelly says. “I encourage them to talk to their doctor.”
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