Alcohol Affects Women Differently as it would men. Women are advised to drink less because, in general, their bodies don’t process alcohol as efficiently as men’s. Women start to have alcohol-related problems at lower drinking levels than men do. They tend to absorb more alcohol and take longer to break it down and remove it from their bodies.

So, when drinking equal amounts, women will have in their blood than men, and the immediate effects happen quicker and last longer. Women appear to be more vulnerable than men to many adverse consequences of alcohol use. Women achieve higher concentrations of alcohol in the blood and become more impaired than men after drinking equivalent amounts of alcohol. Research also suggests that women are more susceptible than men to alcohol-related organ damage and to trauma resulting from traffic crashes and interpersonal violence.

Where women and men drink at the same rate, women continue to be at higher risk than are men for certain serious medical consequences of alcohol use, including liver, brain, and heart damage. We know that some of this risk is due to gender differences in metabolism; it also could quite possibly be due to gender-related differences in brain chemistry, in genetic risk factors, or to entirely different factors that are currently unknown. The more science can tell us about gender-related aspects of alcohol-related problems-not only what they are but why-the better job we will be able to do to prevent and treat those problems in all populations.

There are a few reasons for this

• On average women weigh less than men.
• Alcohol disperses in body water, and pound for pound, women have less water in their bodies than men do.
• So after a man and woman of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration will tend to be higher – this puts women at greater risk of harm.
• As a result, a woman’s brain and other organs tend to be exposed to more alcohol, as well as to more of the potentially harmful by-products which result when the body breaks down and eliminates alcohol.