According to the World Health Organization, alcohol is one of the most significant risk factors for diseases including chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.  Compared with men, women become more cognitively impaired by alcohol and are more susceptible to alcohol-related organ damage.    Women develop damage with less intake and  over a shorter period of time than men.   When men and women of the same weight consume equal amounts of alcohol, women have higher blood alcohol concentrations.   This is due in part because women have proportionately more body fat and a lower volume of body water compared with men of similar weight. This leads to women having a higher concentration of alcohol because there is less volume of water to dilute the alcohol.

in women, alcohol metabolizes slower in their stomachs and upper intestines allowing more alcohol to reach the blood stream and other organs than in men, leading to increased organ damage.  Women have more severe complications related to alcohol abuse than men including developing alcohol dependency more quickly.   Damage resulting from alcohol dependency  that is more severe in women includes liver damage (hepatitis/cirrhosis), premature death from cardiovascular conditions, cognitive and motor function decline,  and fertility issues.

Age seems to matter.  Older women have even less body water, a decreased tolerance for alcohol, and an even slower metabolism rate for alcohol.

Source:  Substance Abuse Treatment:  Addressing the Specific needs of Women. HHS Publication No.  (SMA) 09-4426.  2009

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You are right Robert, women become intoxicated right after drinking less quantities of alcohol than are needed to produce intoxication in men. Heavy alcohol drinking can get a major physical toll on women than on men. I was reading once that Female alcoholics have death rates somewhere between 50 to 100 percent greater than those of male alcoholics.

Women become more impaired than men do after drinking the same amount of alcohol, even when differences in body weight are taken into account. This is because womens bodies have less water than mens bodies. Because alcohol mixes with body water, a given amount of alcohol becomes more highly concentrated in a woman's body than in a man's. In other words, it would be like dropping the same amount of alcohol into a much smaller pail of water. That is why the recommended drinking limit for women is lower than for men. Chronic alcohol abuse takes a heavier physical toll on women than on men. Alcohol dependence and related medical problems, such as brain, heart, and liver damage, progress more rapidly in women than in men. The consequences and effects of alcohol use are serious, in many cases life threatening.

It is a fact that Alcohol does have different affects of certain people. I am a recovering alcoholic and I have not taken a drink for over 7 years thanks to AA. I see many people come to meetings, men and women and its quite obvious alcohol seems to take women physically quicker than men, i dont know why and neither does anybody else.. What I do know is anybody can recover from alcoholism, you just have to want to stop and get into recovery...if i can do it anybody can, its hard in the beginning but as time goes by and you realize why you were drinking so much then you can stop. People with alcohol problems are using alcohol to hide from life (i was) i simply could not live properly.. there are many traits I identified with alcoholics, their thinking, their behaviour and to stop I had to change, and change everything about me... recovery is possible I have not wanted to drink for years and that is a miracle...

I don't know if this helps or not, but in the past when friends and I would go out on the town and drink. We would fill our stomachs with greasy food and the next we would not have hangovers. I think coating your intestine with oil helps in preventing the adsorption of alcohol into the body. I don't as must as I did back than, maybe a beer once in a while, and I feel great.

i always think that alcohol is not good for our health. a beer once in a while is ok, but water is the best. regards

Women, especially those who are pregnant should refrain from drinking alcohol. It is bad for themselves and the unborn babies. If you really have to drink, please do it moderately, maybe just one glass, no more. Think of the next generation.