I guess that the Biden Administration has now finally hired a biologist.
Regards,
Posted on 03/23/2024 7:12:26 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When Karla Adkins looked in the rearview mirror of her car one morning nearly 10 years ago, she noticed the whites of her eyes had turned yellow.
She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn't her first concern.
"Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again," said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
A smiling brown-haired woman sits on an outdoor staircase wearing a green sweater and jeans, her bare feet on the sand. Karla Adkins works as a coach to help people quit drinking alcohol. After she nearly died from liver failure 10 years ago, she thought her social life was over. "Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again." ALLISON DUFF But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. "It was super fast," Adkins said.
Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from excessive drinking shows that rates among women are climbing faster than they are among men. The Biden administration considers this trend alarming, with one new estimate predicting women will account for close to half of alcohol-associated liver disease costs in the U.S. by 2040, a $66 billion total price tag.
It's a high-priority topic for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which together will release updated national dietary guidelines next year. But with marketing for alcoholic beverages increasingly geared toward women, and social drinking already a huge part of American culture, change isn't something everyone may be ready to raise a glass to.
"This is a touchy topic," said Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. "There is no safe level of alcohol use," she said. "That's, like, new information that people didn't want to know."
Over the past 50 years, women have increasingly entered the workforce and delayed motherhood, which likely has contributed to the problem as women historically drank less when they became mothers.
"Parenthood tended to be this protective factor," but that's not always the case anymore, said Adams, who studies addiction.
More than 600,000 people in the U.S. died from causes related to alcohol from 1999 to 2020, according to research published in JAMA Network Open last year, positioning alcohol among the leading causes of preventable death in this country behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity and illegal drugs.
The World Health Organization and various studies have found that no amount of alcohol is safe for human health. Even light drinking has been linked to health concerns, like hypertension and coronary artery disease and an increased risk of breast and other cancers.
More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic "significantly exacerbated" binge-drinking, said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, as people used alcohol to cope with stress. That is particularly true of women, who are more likely to drink alcohol because of stress than men, he said.
chrissie-bonner-drinking-illustration.png Research indicates stress is one of the main reasons that people misuse alcohol. Experts also say unique burdens lead many mothers to rely on alcohol. "It's a vulnerable group," says Rachel Sayko Adams, a research associate professor at the Boston University School of PublicHealth. CHRISSIE BONNER But women are also frequently the focus of gender-targeted advertising for alcoholic beverages. The growth of rosé sales and low-calorie wines, for example, has exploded in recent years. New research published by the International Journal of Drug Policy in February found that the "pinking of products is a tactic commonly used by the alcohol industry to target the female market."
Also at play is the emergence of a phenomenon largely perpetuated by women on social media that makes light of drinking to deal with the difficulties of motherhood. The misperception of "mommy wine culture," said Adams, is that "if you can drink in a normal way, a moderate way, if you can handle your alcohol, you're fine."
And while it's unclear to what extent memes and online videos influence women's drinking habits, the topic merits further study, said Adams, who with colleagues last year found that women without children at age 35 are still at the highest risk for binge-drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms among all age groups of women. But over the past two decades, the research concluded, the risk is escalating for both childless women and mothers.
These factors at play, coupled with the pressure to fit in, can make excessive drinking a difficult conversation to broach. "It's a very taboo topic," Adams said.
And when it does come up, said Stephanie Garbarino, a transplant hepatologist at Duke Health, it's often surprising how many patients are unaware how their drinking affects their health.
"Often, they didn't know there was anything wrong with what they're doing," she said. She is more frequently seeing younger patients with liver disease, including men and women in their 20s and 30s.
And public health and addiction experts fear that alcohol-related liver disease among women will become a costly issue for the nation to address. Women accounted for 29% of all costs associated with the disease in the U.S. in 2022 and are expected to account for 43% by 2040, estimated a new analysis published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in February.
National dietary guidelines advise women to drink no more than one alcoholic drink a day. Those guidelines are up for a five-year review next year by the USDA and HHS, which has called a special committee to examine, among other questions, the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risks. The report will be made public in 2025.
When Canada published guidance in 2023 advising that drinking any more than two alcoholic beverages a week carried health risks, Koob sparked backlash when his comments to the Daily Mail suggested that U.S. guidelines might move in the same direction. The CDC report published in February suggested that an increase in alcohol taxes could help reduce excessive alcohol use and deaths. Koob's office would not comment on such policies.
It's a topic close to Adkins' heart. She now works as a coach to help others — mostly women — stop drinking, and said the pandemic prompted her to publish a book about her near-death experience from liver failure. And while Adkins lives with cirrhosis, this September will mark 10 years since her last drink.
"The amazing thing is, you can't get much worse from where I got," said Adkins. "My hope is really to change the narrative."
>> FOMO
B) great point — the Fear Of Missing Out. Which with respect to material substance is an actual thing — (omitting the classic classifications intentionally)
S) awesome recognition of your priorities
The need to be careful of getting slipped a micky
You are delusional if you think there are a lot of younger than 40 males interested in 40 and older women. Of course there are some, they’re known as “mamma’s boys”, and most have serious oedipal tendencies.
Why take someone else’s reject/likely to produce a special needs child, when there are lots of willing females that are still in their prime childbirth years?
Oh, and the “Wall” another poster alluded to: It’s closer to 30. Just take a look at Alexandria Cortez when she was first elected, and look at her now.
I get into the rooms with the sobering and sobered up guys who have bought the drinks for younger women and I see a lot of ego on the table not necessarily what you describe.
But the crazies are out there my daughters have had some violent boyfriends that’s for sure.
Do your female friends know you consider them all past the “Wall” with no hope? How charming.
You are delusional if you think AOC was hot. I also know young moms with special needs kids and some men do not want kids or more kids. I also know older women in very happy long term relationships with younger men.
“working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors”
I think I see a problem
Women most certainly do NOT have their choice of younger men @ 40. Absurd
They have their choice of going younger or older at 40. Half the guys I know are dating older women. Lots of younger women are going “boy sober” and will mot date, period. Many girls prefer other girls. Just sayin.
Don’t gaslight.
I used AOC as an example of a woman who was of average looks, to compare what she looked like under 30 to what she looks like now. IOW, to demonstrate “The Wall”.
Nice try. Or did YOU once think she was hot? That’s called projection, BTW.
Are you drunk right now?
I think you are. Probably explains why your blogpimp thread has no responses.
Well I am a woman that never thought AOC was hot. Her mouth is still the same. Half the women you see on the street and think they are 25 and hot are actually much older.
I certainly don’t drink as much as I used to. Only the occasional beer. Why? Because good beer costs too much. Thanks, Biden, Democrats and GOPee.
AOC looks better when it’s the last call and you’ve had a couple of drinks.
Disgusting trying to paint biden and the democrats as all concerned and caring.
Like they care at all.
No, people like me - misanthropes who feel lonely and embittered by life - we are more vulnerable.
If it weren't for Billy - my bartender, who knows how to make a mean "Rusty Nail" - I would have given up on humanity long ago!
Seriously: I wonder if you might be one of the exceptions - someone for whom alcohol is not an ultimately ineffective panacea for a far deeper problem.
Regards,
Well, as long as it keeps them off the streets!
Seriously: What are your daughters doing, hanging around "tiddy bars" and allowing strange men (and Democrats, at that!) buy them "adult beverages?"
Shouldn't they be at home, studying for their college final exams, or folding diapers, or something?
Regards,
I guess that the Biden Administration has now finally hired a biologist.
Regards,
I got the impression she was working there.
Oh, as long as she's being paid to sit at the bar, and have strange men buy her drinks, then that's okay!
I mean: That's her job!
Regards,
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