Girls, now toast to good health

Experts find that as many as one in six US college women skip meals to get drunk faster and “make room” for alcohol calories, with three times as many women reportedly engaging in what’s dubbed “drunkorexia” than men.

Experts find that as many as one in six US college women skip meals to get drunk faster and “make room” for alcohol calories, with three times as many women reportedly engaging in what’s dubbed “drunkorexia” than men. The phenomenon affects thousands of women, according to experts, and a team from the University of Missouri in the US is now underscoring the long-term health implications.

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Researchers stated that 16% of those surveyed reported restricting calories to "save them" for drinking. Motivations for drunkorexia include staying slim, getting intoxicated faster, and saving money that would otherwise be spent on food to buy alcohol. "Depriving the brain of adequate nutrition and consuming large amounts of alcohol can be dangerous," researcher Victoria Osborne said. "Together, they can cause short-and long-term cognitive problems including difficulty in concentrating, studying, and taking decisions." She added that women are at higher risk for health problems related to binge drinking because they metabolise alcohol differently than men. Women have more body fat and less water in their systems than men do. They also have lower levels of an enzyme important in the breakdown of alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), US. This means they experience the effects of drinking more quickly and for a longer time than men.

So what is a safe level of drinking?
The NIAAA cites that for most adults, drinking, up to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women causes, few, if any problems.