Wine down: How alcohol affects your body after 40

Since the start of the pandemic drinking at home has become the norm but how much are you drinking and what is it doing to your health? Jen Stevens finds out

Picture: iStock 

If one thing has been put in the spotlight in recent months, it is the amount of alcohol that women are now consuming at home. A wine-down culture has emerged among women who feel they “deserve” a large glass of something at the end of a busy day or week. But those drinks quickly add up and the effect they have on health is not good.

Drinkaware conducts an annual survey that provides an overview of attitudes and behaviours towards alcohol. Over the past two years, the Drinkaware Barometer has specifically explored the impact of the pandemic on drinking patterns, behaviours, and attitudes. The 2021 Barometer found that 54% of 35–49-year-olds were drinking on at least a weekly basis, with 23% reporting having binge drank in the past 30 days. It also found that there was a higher incidence of women that reported drinking more alcohol during the initial lockdown phase at 28%, versus 22% of men.

Binge drinking

Binge drinking may sound extreme but it happens a lot more often than you might think, says dietician Sarah Keogh (eatwell.ie). “When I tell people that officially a binge of alcohol is three pints of beer or three large glasses of wine, everybody is like ‘yeah, that’s a quiet night in’. In Ireland, most of our drinking is binge drinking, but we tend to think of a binge as three days of going for it.

“Of course, the less you can drink the better but if you are drinking alcohol ideally you should have two or perhaps three small drinks and then stop and make sure that you have plenty of alcohol-free days in between.”

Not understanding how much alcohol makes up an episode of binge drinking rings true when you look at the numbers associated with alcohol use disorder in Ireland. Eunan McKinney, the head of communications and advocacy at Alcohol Action Ireland says the number of people who fall into the scale of alcohol use disorder is shocking.

“As a nation, alcohol use disorder is prevalent in a little under 15% of the total population. That tallies to just under 580,000 people. There is a scale to the disorder of mild, moderate and severe but even at the severe end there’s quite a significant number.”

The 2019-2020 Irish National Drug and Alcohol Survey published by the Health Research Board found that 16.2% of 35–49-year-olds show a prevalence of alcohol use disorder. According to the CSO, there are some 746,000 people in this category which means that 120,000 people in that age group have a problematic engagement with alcohol.

McKinney says because of the culture of drinking in Ireland people who fall into the mild category rarely realise that there’s a problem.

“They don’t understand that they’re on the scale at all. Essentially, what we have in Ireland is complete denial in respect of the spectrum we fall into. There’s the idea that you’re an alcoholic or nothing and that’s it. Everybody else is normal, but of course, it’s not normal. The headline figure has always been that in Ireland 50% of all people who drink alcohol do so in a harmful and hazardous way.”

Metabolism

Four wineglasses with different colors of wine

As we grow older the repercussions of those nightly drinks become more evident. “We don’t necessarily get more dehydrated, it’s just that as we age, we tend to forget about drinking as much water and we often drink a lot more tea and coffee, which for some people are a little bit dehydrating,” says Keogh.

“Women also have less fluid in their bodies than men in general which is why women often get worse hangovers. The liver ages too so its ability to metabolise alcohol is going to shift.”

That 35–49-year group is also the cohort most likely to have young children and be working full-time which leaves little time for rest and recovery.

The lack of sleep caused by alcohol can have detrimental effects, says Keogh. “Alcohol really disturbs sleep. You don’t get your deep sleep and you’re more likely to wake up in the night. As we get older, we start to have issues around sleep anyway and so the alcohol just exacerbates that. And of course, if your sleep is disturbed, your energy levels are affected, and you can eat anything up to 300 extra calories the next day.”

Perimenopause and menopause

Those extra calories are something that consultant physician and endocrinologist Dr Mary Ryan says that women over 40 need to be particularly careful about.

“When you’re in perimenopause and menopause your metabolism is slowing and so you’ve got to be more aware of everything you’re eating and drinking. Women don’t often think of the calories and sugar content in the alcohol that they’re consuming. We’ve seen a lot of evidence that since the Covid pandemic women have been drinking a lot more at home and aren’t mindful of the calorific content of what they’re drinking,” says Ryan.

“During perimenopause and menopause you can put on weight around the abdomen and if you overdrink alcohol you’re going to put on weight there too, weight in that area increases the risk of diabetes and then diabetes in turn can bring on menopause, so you’ve got a vicious circle going on.”

Cancer

There has been much talk in recent years about how one glass of wine is beneficial to your health, but Keogh says it’s a myth. “That notion that one glass of wine a day is good for you because of the benefits to the heart from the polyphenols is just fantasy. You will get exactly the same benefit from eating the grapes without the alcohol.

“The bad news is that the World Cancer Research Fund tells us that there is no safe level of alcohol when it comes to cancer. It recommends no alcohol at all. It’s not like red meat where you can eat it three to five times a week before the risk kicks in. The risks with alcohol increase from the first drink. Mouth cancer, breast cancer, stomach cancer and colon cancer are all alcohol-related.”

As we age, alcohol consumption can also lead to osteoporosis. “We start to think about the long-term health of our bones in our 40s and 50s and we talk about calcium and vitamin D but ultimately, we need to talk about limiting alcohol for bone health as well,” says Keogh.

Other major health issues that alcohol can cause are circulatory disease and stroke. “Everyone thinks that liver is the main thing affected and if their liver is fine, they’re OK with alcohol but it’s a big, big cause of stroke,” says Keogh.

Ageing

If you’re in that 35-49 cohort of drinkers, Keogh says you’re going to see it in the mirror. “You’re going to be dehydrated so that’s always going to immediately make you look a little bit older, but it also means the liver is working really hard to process the alcohol which means it’s not processing other toxins in the body. It needs certain vitamins and minerals to process it and if they’re being used for that they’re not available to the skin.”

Fertility

There are implications when it comes to fertility too. For men, alcohol affects the quality and motility of the sperm and for women, it can have an impact on the lining of the womb. “There are so many causes of infertility, nutrition is just one of many factors,” says Keogh.

“The research is clear though, that cutting out alcohol or severely reducing it will help.”

Social media survey

Official health research is important but what do women on social media say about their drinking. I posed some questions on Instagram and there were more than 1,000 respondents. The answers reflected a lot of what we already know about the wine-down culture that’s so prevalent now, but I also had messages from women saying they hate the notion of using alcohol as a reward for hard work, and when they mention it to friends or colleagues they’re seen as dry and left out of weekend conversations and plans.

The results:

• 66% said that a Friday night drink marks the end of a long week
• 79% said that they drink once or twice a week, 19% said three or four times and just 2% said every night
• When asked about pandemic drinking 30% said they’re drinking more than before, 21% said that they were drinking more but have reined it in now and 49% said no, they weren’t drinking more.
• Wine is the favourite drink of respondents with 79% saying it was their go-to beverage, 11% choosing spirits and just 10% choosing beer.