“we need to stop the stigma towards drug users and addicts” and “we need to challenge the idea that being sober makes you boring” and “we need to stop acting like binge drinking to the extent you’re doing medical damage is fun and normal for young people” are all ideas that can and should coexist.
just so we’re clear, the threshold for “binge drinking to the extent you’re doing medical damage” is waaaay lower than you think.
I work in an obstetrician and gynaecologist’s office. we have to tell patients on a regular basis that they are binge drinking weekly when they think they are simply consuming a normal amount of alcohol on the weekends.
having more than 3 drinks in a single sitting if you have an estrogen based endocrine system is a binge that is medically significant.
having more than 5 in a sitting is a medically significant binge for someone with a testosterone based endocrine system.
every time you do this, it significantly impacts your risk of getting breast cancer, and damages your liver. it takes time to recover from that liver damage. if you’re having a 3-5 or more drink binge on a weekly basis, you are an alcoholic, medically speaking, and your liver is not recovering.
again: the bar for what binge drinking is, medically, is so much lower than what you think it is.
alcohol is a really toxic substance and not something you should fuck around with.
again: if you have an estrogenized hormone system (common for most women), then 3 drinks is a binge. if you have a testosteronized hormone system (common for most men), then 5 drinks is a binge.
anything above that number, consumed as frequently as weekly or more, and you’re medically a binge drinking alcoholic.
also, if you’re drinking any quantity of alcohol 6 days a week or more, that’s another threshold at which, medically speaking, you meet the definition of alcoholism. your liver needs more days without alcohol in your system than just one a week to recover and be healthy.
I don’t say any of this to shame anyone—to me, alcoholism or substance use disorders aren’t a sign of weakness or moral failing. and most of us genuinely don’t know this stuff.
rather—I point this out because it’s important to reduce harm, and find ways to live healthier, happier lives. there is a life outside of constant binge drinking. it’s not always easy to find it. but it’s out there. you deserve a life where your emotional needs are met by something other than alcohol, and a life in which your liver is healthy, and the ways you cope and celebrate and find joy don’t put you at increased risk of cancer.
also–even if alcohol is the only way you can self-medicate, or if you choose to go on with your alcohol usage anyway regardless of other options–you still deserve to know what it’s doing to your body.
information is key. you don’t have to stop drinking, but the utter lack of education on alcohol + the normalization of binge drinking in current society leads to many people drinking without any idea of what it’s doing to their bodies.
addicts deserve accurate medical information regardless of what they decide to do with it. for some people, losing liver function is worth the benefits they get from binge drinking, but they can’t make that choice if they don’t know what the consequences are to begin with.
addicts deserve accurate medical information regardless of what they decide to do with it.
Can someone tell me the definition of one drink in this context?
Because a vodka shot is not the same as (idk, some low alcohol percentage alcohol.)
So, what does 3 (or 5) drinks mean.
0.6 ounces of alcohol is a standard drink. Examples include 12 ounces of 5% alcohol beer, or 1.5 ounces of 40% alcohol liquor.
are we confident it’s a hormone- related thing and not a size issue where in someone who is a larger overall body is going to have an easier time than someone with a smaller overall body?
do we have evidence of this being hormone related? Like in trans individuals or maybe people with PCOS or intersex people or is this purely body size?
Are you saying hormone-related but we just have evidence of, say, cisgender men being able to drink more than cisgender women? Do we even have evidence for this or is this just generic medical recommendations? What’s the science actually saying here?
I was going to ask. This sounds like the kind of thing that was devised a little (not totally) disingenuously in the sense that sexism absolutely played a role, and then it got perpetuated without much further investigation.
I would like to be wrong but this sounds like a thing where “hormones” are a stand in for “sex at birth” and where the real issue lies is in body size and composition. Estrogen OS = overall shorter with more fat. Testosterone OS = overall taller with more muscle. Fat/muscle affects how things are broken down and used, and how much of those things someone needs. Meds, alcohol, food.
Not trying to be an asshole, fully believe that there are variations in how much people can tolerate and that body size and composition do tend to align with how the medical industry sorts people into two sexes. Just…I don’t trust research to look that deeply into things like this, once they start getting quoted.
Also just a smidge of “LADIES are delicate and too much of the demon rum will overwhelm their uteruses and they will swoon.” The way women are told they should eat less than a man their height and weight just because they are women, and women should eat less (delicate flowers, must not be seen to swallow meals like a snake, must not be allowed to get fat). No. You are feeding a body. If you aren’t feeding muscle, you are telling it to store fat.
This just sounds like science that is broadly right, for really stupid reasons.
(1500 calories is used as a starvation tactic in Guantanamo, btw, and it’s damaging physically and psychologically. Don’t do it to yourself.)
sexism in medicine is real, but alcohol absolutely has effects on hormone systems, specifically with estrogen.
For example, your liver screens excess estrogen from your body but will not do so efficiently if it is dealing with a damaging poison like alcohol. Having estrogen levels higher than your body would normally self regulate to is a major factor in breast cancer. Studies indicate that for people with estrogenized endocrine system alcohol consumption can increase the risk of breast cancer by as much as 35%
This also means that for anyone on HRT involving estrogen (common for a variety of situations, from menopause to transitioning) the risk of cancer goes up significantly when you are drinking. For example, post-menopausal women who are taking HRT and drink one or two alcoholic drinks per day have a breast cancer risk that is three times higher than women who don’t drink and don’t take HRT.
Alcohol also increases the risk of many types of cancer in people regardless of sex or hormonal system. Heavy drinking can increase the risk of stomach, prostate, and pancreas cancer (among others).
Light drinking, even a single drink each day, can increase the risk of several other types of cancer in any person (for instance liver cancer and colon cancer)
Of these, one notable and significant risk increase is for breast cancer in a person with high levels of estrogen.
Sexism and especially misogyny in medicine is a real issue but the information in this post is good and should not be dismissed on the assumption that medicine is probably wrong and sexist when it says things are “different for women than men”, even tho we may wish they would use other language to describe that situation (i do like estrogenized endocrine system here, because that is the relevant part of the biology).
But the main takeaway here should be that even light drinking seems to increase the likelihood of many types of cancer for all people.
