Alcohol brings fresh risks in the Middle Ages

Americans are drinking more as they reach middle age – and suffering the consequences.

People aged 35 to 50 applied record high level binge drinking in 2022. One recent research found that the greatest augment in hefty alcohol consumption between 2018 and 2022 was recorded among people over 40 years of age. Doctors are particularly concerned about rising alcohol consumption among middle-aged women because more of them are developing alcohol-related liver and heart diseases.

Scientists are not entirely sure why alcohol consumption is increasing among middle-aged people, although they noted that adults in this age bracket face the pressures of caring for both children and aging parents, increased work demands and ““historical” level of loneliness.

But the trend is disturbing: middle age is the age when the health effects of decades of drinking often begin to appear, including cancer and heart and liver disease. Drinking is also more hazardous in midlife, when the body becomes less able to process alcohol and when more people develop chronic diseases that drinking can make worse.

“I don’t like to panic,” said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. “But I think it’s quite concerning at this point.”

A night of hefty drinking is riskier at age 55 than at age 25 for several reasons. Alcohol can worsen health problems that are common in middle age, such as blood sugar problems or high blood pressure. Even one or two drinks, for example, can temporarily raise your heart rate, increasing your risk of: heart attack or heart failure. These effects are especially concerning for people who already have heart disease.

And popular drugs that people take more often in middle age, like blood thinners, can interact with even compact amounts of alcohol and potentially cause sedate complications such as internal bleeding.

As we age, our body processes alcohol less effectively and our tolerance may decrease. The liver works harder to metabolize a martini or manhattan. The natural loss of muscle mass that begins after the age of 30 can make some people more sensitive to the effects of drinking. All this means that alcohol can stay in the bloodstream longer, which can lead to higher concentrations of alcohol in the blood and cause you to become more intoxicated faster and more. That, in turn, can cause falls and other injuries, said Johannes Thrul, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“If you are younger, your body may recover more easily and recover faster,” Dr. Thrul said. “But as you get older, it becomes more and more challenging.”

Generally speaking, the longer alcohol stays in the body, the more severe the hangover. And the morning after drinking alcohol can be especially brutal in middle age, because alcohol disrupts sleep, the quality of which already tends to decline with age.

A few cocktails can make you “feel really good for 15 minutes, maybe a little longer, and then make you feel absolutely crap the entire next day,” said Timothy Stockwell, a researcher at the Canadian Institute of Substance Employ Research.

Drinking in midlife could also harm your future health: fresh research suggests hefty drinking in midlife may augment your risk cognitive impairment later in life, which may be because alcohol can damage brain cells. The surgeon general recently concluded that drinking directly contributes to cancer risk and called for warning labels on alcoholic beverages.

Cutting down on alcohol consumption can dramatically reduce the risk of developing or worsening drinking-related chronic diseases, Dr. Stockwell says, because drinking less can lower blood pressure and blood sugar levels and, in some cases, lend a hand people lose weight. Even if you have been drinking heavily for years, Your liver can at least partially regenerate if you stop. Stopping drinking can also lend a hand people recover conditions such as alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy, which happens when long-term, hefty drinking damages the heart.

“You don’t have to just accept it or just feel bad and leave it at that,” Dr. Thrul said. “There is hope – there is something on the other side.”