‘Do It All’ Generation of Women Dying of Alcohol-Related Illnesses at an Alarming Rate

A new study finds that more women are dying of alcohol-related conditions.

While men are twice as likely to die alcohol-related deaths than women, the gap is quickly narrowing, a JAMA study states.

“During the past century, there has been a steady decrease in male-to-female ratios for problematic alcohol use and alcohol-related harms, from approximately 3 to 1 among those born in the early 1900s to approximately 1 to 1 among those born in the late 1900s,” the study stated.

Researchers found between 2018 and 2020 that men’s alcohol-related mortality rate increased by 12.5 percent, and women’s increased by 14.7 percent.

“Women are now drinking alcohol at higher amounts and frequencies than in the past, likely due to the normalization of alcohol use for female individuals in society,” the JAMA study stated.

Between 1999 and 2020, 605,948 American deaths were “linked to alcohol-related poisoning, gastritis, cardiomyopathy, myopathy, liver disease, polyneuropathy, and pseudo-Cushing syndrome.”

Women will also experience greater health consequences from drinking than men will.

“Women tend to have a higher percentage of body fat and a lower percentage of body water compared with men, resulting in higher alcohol blood concentrations and potentially increasing vulnerability to complications,” the study stated. “Hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle can influence alcohol processing, with certain phases heightening sensitivity to alcohol’s effects.”

Shana Johnson, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician in Scottsdale, Arizona, found that increasing stress levels and stress-related disorders play a major role in the development of disordered drinking, Fox News reported.

“It is not a big leap to look at soaring food and housing costs and think that chronic stress is taking its toll in the form of increased alcohol use to cope with today’s hardships,” Johnson said.

A survey from Deloitte’s Women at Work 2022: A Global Outlook found that 53 percent of women reported that their stress levels were higher than they were a year ago.

Data shows that the number of women experiencing work-related stress is 50 percent higher than it is for men of the same age, Priory Group reported.

“The ‘do it all’ generation of females is feeling the strain, with working women far more stressed than men,” it said.