A new study by researchers at New York University (NYU) reveals that more than one in ten older American men binge drink, putting them at risk of a number of serious diseases and conditions. We know who they are, but why they drink so much may be harder to identify and quantify…
More than one in ten older American men binge drink, putting them
at elevated risk of a number of serious diseases and conditions.
What they did
A team at the NYU College of Global Public Health examined data from 10,927 U.S. adults age 65 and older who participated in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2015 and 2017. They looked at the prevalence of current (past-month) binge alcohol use, defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as five drinks or more on the same occasion for men and four drinks or more for women. They also compared demographic and health factors of past-month binge drinkers with people who drank within the past month, but below the binge drinking threshold.
What they found
First of all, the team, led by Dr. Benjamin Han, discovered that binge drinking among seniors increased by more than 20 percent since the previous study a decade ago. Researchers also found that Binge drinkers were more likely to be male, current tobacco and/or cannabis users, African American, and have less than a high school education. They were also more likely to visit the emergency room in the past year. Similar to previous studies, the study did not find associations between binge drinking and other mental health disorders.
Unexpectedly, they found that binge drinkers binge drinkers had a lower prevalence of two or more chronic diseases compared to non-binge drinkers. But it was suggested that those who had chronic afflictions including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and diabetes may have cut back on or quit drinking after their diagnosis, when their doctors warned against continuing the consumption of Alcohol.
The takeaway
“Our results underscore the importance of educating, screening, and intervening to prevent alcohol-related harms in older adults, who may not be aware of their heightened risk for injuries and how alcohol can exacerbate chronic diseases,” Han concluded.
My take
All of what Dr. Han says make perfect sense given the numbers his comments are based on. But I’m more interested in why older Americans (and older folks across the western world by association) are drinking, and, apparently, drinking in an atmosphere of greater desperation that they were a decade ago. I speculate that many of the binge-drinking seniors identified by Han and his team are feeling feeling increasing pressure to get along on their fixed incomes as the cost of food and housing (in particular; though the cost of everything is going up sharply). I’ve often joked with my doctor who says I’ll live to be 100. I tell her, I hope not; I can’t afford it. But for others, that’s no joke.
They may also be feeling less secure in general as the culture in which they live tries to cope with increasing gang violence, escalating rates of mass shootings and other social pressures. And we hear increasingly that older folks are reporting feelings of isolation.
And it’s not just older Black men who are experiencing greater anxiety over their place is the world today. It may be, though, that they are feeling the pressure more acutely because they feel more vulnerable than other racial and ethnic groups. Whatever the reason, the stats on binge drinking uncovered by Dr. Han and his team are just warnings of something much bigger and more serious than that issue by itself, in isolation.
~ Maggie J.