Studies Show That Women Binge Drinking Is Increasing
Binge drinking is a tricky subject to figure out. Most people think binge drinking is when someone consumes a large amount of alcohol in one night, on maybe a weekly basis, but that is not true. With the number of women binge drinking increasing, it is time society knows what binge drinking is and get it under control.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also known as the CDC, determines binge drinking for women as consuming four or more alcoholic beverages in one event. In men, binge drinking is considered having five or more alcoholic beverages in one event. In general, in these events, the binge drinking occurs in about two hours. While everyone else a unique tolerance to alcohol, this information can be used as an average guideline.
In recent studies, women binge drinking is increasing at an alarming rate and everyone is questioning why. Why are women drinking more nowadays? What has changed? The American Journal of Public Health studies show that binge drinking rates among women went up 17.5 percent from 2005 to 2012.
This study took place over a 10 year span and studied people 21 and older. The study found that more than 18 percent of Americans were binge drinkers in 2012. That finding brings the total of binge drinkers up 9 percent from 2005. This study also showed women binge drinking was on the rise, with rates of women binge drinking going up 17.5 percent from 2005 and 2012.
These results were alarming to many people, including the lead author of the study, Ali Mokdad, PhD. Dr. Mokdad is the professor of global health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Dr. Mokdad stated, “We were surprised, especially that women have [more than] double the rates of increased drinking as men.â€
Dr. Mokdad says there are three main reasons that are more than likely behind this spike in binge drinking:
1. Socioeconomic factors: These factors would be things like money and education. There are more females working now than there were in 2005, which contributes to females bringing in their own income and choosing what to do with it, including going to bars. More women are also choosing to wait to start a family later in life or not to have children at all, which leads to another category of females that have the means to go out with friends and drink, if they choose to.
2. Accessibility: With more and more businesses popping up, it creates a bigger variety of bars, like gastro pubs. This leads to easy access to bars, and in some cases bars are clustered near each other that make it easy to bar-hop for social events.
3. Social norms: Cultural acceptance of alcohol has a lot to do with women binge drinking. Drinking is used to celebrate events, as well as dealing with bad times, as women spend more time outside of the family life they are more prone to dealing with this cultural lifestyle.
http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/heavy-drinking-and-binge-drinking-rise-sharply-us-counties
https://www.yahoo.com/health/heres-a-sobering-fact-binge-drinking-is-on-the-117270302932.html