3.3 Susceptibility to alcohol
|
People are affected by alcohol in different ways. Is it just the amount of alcohol consumed or do other factors influence how a person’s health and behaviour are affected by alcohol? |
|
|
Jane Fisher |
Jane Fisher, alcohol and drug education professional, explains some of the factors that affect a person’s susceptibility to alcohol.
You need to have the Flash Player installed in your browser in order to use the audio player.
Some of the factors that make people more susceptible to the effects of alcohol is whether they’re a woman or a man, because women have higher fat and less muscle than men and so that means that it takes them longer to process the alcohol. Same with young people. Young people, their liver’s still immature; they can’t process the toxins from alcohol as efficiently as an adult. People of smaller stature, the toxins from alcohol will be more concentrated in their blood and their bloodstream. People who are not used to drinking are probably going to feel the effects of alcohol a lot more quickly than people who drink regularly. Someone who hasn’t eaten and has an empty stomach, they are going to feel the effects of alcohol quite quickly. Someone just with poor general health—if your body’s already trying to fight something then your liver may not be able to process the toxins from alcohol as quickly as someone who’s healthy and they’re not fighting off some sort of low-grade infection or whatever else is going on. Someone with a mental health disorder—drinking may make that disorder worse, and again it could lead to someone who was very depressed, who was drinking a lot, it could make their depression worse. And the other thing is your ethnicity can sometimes affect how you react to alcohol. For example, Asians seem to get to a stage of feeling nauseated a lot more quickly than what someone from European descent might. So your ethnicity can be a factor in alcohol but it’s only a rule of thumb—it’s not absolutely true for everyone, it’s sort of more an individual thing. |
Factors that influence the effect of alcohol include the following:
Women tend to have a smaller body size and a higher proportion of body fat than men. For women, a given amount of alcohol is distributed over a smaller body volume with less absorption as alcohol is not taken up by fatty tissues. In addition, the ability to break down alcohol is limited by the size of the liver, and women on average have smaller livers than men. However, the higher level of risk-taking behaviour among men means that, over a lifetime, male risks exceed female risks for a given pattern of drinking
In general, the younger and smaller a person is (e.g. children) the less tolerant they are to alcohol. Younger people also have less experience of drinking and its effects. In addition, puberty is often accompanied with risk-taking behaviours (such as an increased risk of drinking, sometimes in association with other dangerous physical activities or risky sexual behaviour).
Finally, as people age, their tolerance for alcohol decreases and the risk of falls, driving accidents and adverse interactions with medications increases.
People who have, or are prone to, mental illness such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia may have worse symptoms after drinking.
Alcohol can also disrupt the later part of the sleep cycle, which may trigger a variety of mental health problems in people who are already prone to these conditions.
Alcohol can interact with a wide range of prescription and non prescription medications, herbal preparations and illicit drugs. This can alter the effect of the alcohol or the medication and has the potential to cause serious harm both to the drinker and to others.
People who already have health conditions caused or exacerbated by alcohol, such as alcohol dependence cirrhosis of the liver, alcoholic hepatitis or pancreatitis are at risk of the condition becoming worse if they drink alcohol.
People who have a family history of alcohol abuse and dependence (particularly among first-degree relatives) have an increased risk of developing dependence themselves.