Magazine Warns Of Alcohol Dangers

One week you read that a daily dose of wine increases your risk of breast cancer. The next week there’s another scientific study saying alcohol may reduce the risk of heart disease.

To drink or not to drink? And if you do, how much is safe? The answers are in April Glamour’s “Young Women and Alcohol” - a piece that thoroughly examines the newest research on the risks and benefits of drinking for women.

The dangers, writes author Peter Jaret, are much more serious than previously thought, particularly for younger women. In part, that’s because scientists have discovered women’s bodies metabolize alcohol less efficiently than men’s, resulting in more alcohol entering the bloodstream with every drink.

“Recent findings also show that the damaging effects of alcohol on the liver and other organs begins much sooner and progresses more rapidly in women than men,” Jaret reports. The risk of dying from alcohol-related damage starts at two drinks a day for women; it’s four for men. An estimated 40,000 women a year die of alcohol-related illnesses, almost as many as breast cancer.

Because alcohol affects judgment, it raises the risk of unprotected sex. According to a nationwide survey, nearly 60 percent of college women who contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, had been drinking. Alcohol is also a factor in 90 percent of the rapes on college campuses, the study says.

The health benefits of drinking don’t kick in until women reach middle age. In a study of female nurses age 34 to 59, those who had three-to-nine drinks a week were 40 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack than those who didn’t drink.

Regardless of age, the story concludes that the safest limit for all women is no more than one drink a day.