Girls binge drinking more than boys, UK
For the first time ever in the UK, the total number of teenage girls binge drinking is higher than the number of boys. 32% of girls and 25% of boys aged 15-16 said they had been on a drinking binge (once or more) during the last month.
The study, carried out by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Drugs questioned 2,000 children in the UK. Team leader was Prof. Martin Plant, Univ West of England.
The definition of 'binge drinking' is consuming more than five units of alcohol in one session. Since 1999, the last time a similar study was carried out, boys are binge drinking less while the figure for girls has shot up.
Prof. Plant said "There is clearly a profound social change going on. We have not seen this kind of increasing trend among young women in opposition to men, ever. What we have now got is a different underlying trend for young women that has come on in the last six years, and it is quite clear and quite strong."
Plant said the UK has a drinking culture which has to be addressed by the authorities.
What is binge drinking?
Binge drinking is the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks in a row on at least one occasion.
Although binge drinking can be dangerous at any age, it is a special problem among teens and young adults.
Why is binge drinking so dangerous?
Binge drinking is harmful because of the potential consequences. People who binge on a regular basis are at an even higher risk for negative consequences. Since young people frequently combine high risk activities with binge drinking, their potential for death or serious injury is very high. Some of the dangers include:
-- Death or injury due to falls, fires, drowning, or a drunk driving crash.
-- Pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases due to unintended sexual activity.
-- Being the victim or perpetrator of date rape or other assault.
-- Death from alcohol poisoning.
What is alcohol poisoning?
Alcohol is actually a depressant drug. When a large amount is consumed in a short period of time, the body cannot process it quickly enough, resulting in a high blood alcohol content (BAC). Most people know that a BAC of more than .10 % is legally drunk, but very high concentrations can result in more than just legal problems.
A very high BAC can cause central nervous system depression, loss of consciousness, respiratory arrest, and death. Many victims die because they begin to throw up while they are unconscious and then choke to death on their own vomit.
Study links obesity, other health problems to adolescent binge drinking
Heavy drinking during the teenage years begins taking a serious health toll by the time people are 24 years old.
A University of Washington study has found that people who began binge drinking at age 13 and continued throughout adolescence were nearly four times as likely to be overweight or obese and almost 3� times as likely to have high blood pressure when they were 24 years old than were people who never or rarely drank heavily during adolescence. It also found four distinct patterns or trajectories of binge drinking among teenagers.
The study looked at young adult health consequences of adolescent binge drinking - consuming five or more drinks on a single occasion - between the ages of 13 and 18. Previous research has shown that adolescent binge drinking results in a number of immediate negative consequences, including involvement in fatal or injurious automobile accidents and engaging in risky sexual behavior. But little had been known about the effects of adolescent heavy drinking into young adulthood.
"In our analysis, we did look at whether people were currently binge drinking at age 24. We controlled for it, along with other factors, such as adolescent drug use, ethnicity, gender and family poverty, and we still saw different patterns of health outcomes depending on which trajectory of binge drinking teenagers followed," said Karl Hill, a co-author of the study and director of the Seattle Social Development Project.
"It is the pattern of early and on-going drinking that is the key."
The research team from the UW's Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work found four categories of adolescent binge drinking. They are:
-- Chronic binge drinkers (3 percent), who started at age 13 and continued to binge drink between three and five times a month through age 18.
-- Escalators (4 percent), who began drinking around age 15 and their bingeing increased sharply and continuously until they were binge drinking nearly 10 times monthly by age 18.
-- Late onsetters (23 percent), who started drinking after age 16 and averaged two bingeing episodes a month by age 18.
-- Non-binge drinkers (70 percent) never or rarely engaged in binge drinking between ages 13 and 18.
The study used data from the on-going Seattle Social Development Project led by the UW's J. David Hawkins of more than 800 Seattle school children who are now adults. The participants were nearly equally divided between males and females. Forty-seven percent identified themselves as white, 23 percent as black, 21 percent as Asian-Americans, 6 percent as American Indians and 3 percent as being from another ethnic or racial group.
The participants were interviewed annually starting at age 13 through age 16 and again at ages 18, 21 and 24. They were asked about their alcohol, tobacco and drug use. At 24 they were asked about such health-related behaviors as safe driving, use of seat belts in automobiles and regular exercise. In addition, they had their blood pressure checked twice and were questioned about having any of 18 illnesses or health conditions, including asthma or emphysema, high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, cancer and heart disease, in the past year.
"Young adults who either did not binge drink or rarely did so during adolescence are the mostly likely to be healthy and engage in safe health-related behaviors," said Sabrina Oesterle, lead author of the study and a research associate in the UW's Social Development Research Group. "Being overweight or having hypertension can be linked to future problems such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. What we are seeing are the first warning signs of more serious health problems. Young adults' history of binge drinking during the teenage years, irrespective of current levels of binge drinking, appears to have serious effects on their health by age 24."
The study also noted other differences among the groups.
Late onsetters were 50 percent more likely to have been ill in the past year as young adults who did not drink heavily as teens. They were also 50 percent more likely to drive drunk or high on drugs or to ride or drive with someone who was drunk or high than were non-heavy drinkers. Escalators, who reported the highest levels of binge drinking by age 18, also engaged in more unsafe driving practices, than non-heavy drinkers. This group also engaged in very high levels of anti-social behavior, including drug use and crime, according to an earlier study by the research team.
"Looking at patterns of drinking over time is more revealing than looking at drinking at a single time when some groups of people don't look that different from each other," said Hill. "Some people start heavy drinking early and continue, others start late and increase quickly, and each of these groups have different health outcomes. This suggests the importance of prevention programs that start early, in elementary school, and continue through high school to reach children who begin to use alcohol and drugs at different ages."
The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Co-authors of the study were Hawkins and Richard Catalano, UW professors of social work and director and associate director of the Social Development Research Group, respectively; Robert Abbott, chairman of educational psychology at the UW; and Jie Guo, a former UW research scientist. The study was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
For more information, contact Oesterle at 206-616-9115 or soe@u.washington.edu or Hill at 206-685-3859 or khill@u.washington.edu.
Contact: Joel Schwarz
joels@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
Binge-drinking costing UK £20 billion a year
The UK government is becoming alarmed at the spiralling costs of binge-drinking. The health bill for the NHS (national health service) is becoming a serious concern. The social costs - crime and the disruption to family life are rising dramatically.
The government is going to propose having wardens at taxi ranks at weekends at night. They said they are also going to bear down on pubs that serve alcohol to under 18s.
The problem is a cultural one, say many experts. Many of Britain's youth go out on Friday and Saturday nights with just one aim - to get blind drunk.
Two groups of people in the UK are beginning to become a serious problem to themselves and those around them.
The first group consists of people aged 18-25. They go out just to get as drunk as they can. Their behaviour causes serious problems of crime, disorder and the clogging up of emergency rooms in hospitals (A&E Departments).
The second group consists of older people who are chronic drinkers. They are drinking more often and more heavily. The NHS is seeing a rise in cases of cirrhosis and heart disease among this older group.
The government says it would like to see more of a continental European cafe-bar culture. Britons are the biggest binge-drinkers in Europe. Binge-drinking basically means going out on the town to get blind drunk.
The government's new plan called Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England involves voluntary action by alcohol producers and retailers, and action on the part of the government, police and councils. The actions include:
-- A plan to target pubs and shops suspected of selling alcohol to under-18s; including police sting operations
-- Greater use of exclusion orders and fixed-penalty fines for alcohol-related anti-social behaviour
-- Police urged to use more community wardens to patrol areas such as taxi ranks at night
-- Simpler 'sensible drinking' messages from the government and better alcohol education in schools
-- Review of the code of practice for TV advertising to ensure it does not target young drinkers or glamorise drinking
-- 'Social responsibility charter' for drinks producers which includes providing clear product information and health warnings
-- 'Code of good conduct' schemes for shops, pubs and clubs, again including providing information on alcohol
-- National audit of alcohol treatment services; better training for medical staff
A government spokesman said that if these actions do not work they will bring in legislation to make sure it does. This could include forcing pubs to pay for policing costs.
The police say that until people realise that anti-social behaviour is punishable nothing will change. They say that the chances of being punished for anti-social drinking were remote.
Many town centres in the UK have become kids drinking areas at weekends (nights). They are full of pubs and clubs and not much else (at night). Unlike continental European towns, weekend nightlife in UK towns is not designed for family outings. In fact, many young Brits out on a Friday night binge would be horrified to see their mothers in the town centre.
Opinion of the Editor of Medical News Today:
I live in a town on the South East coast of England. I have given up taking my family to restaurants in the town centre. I have two sons, one is ten and the other is 17. The last time I took them out we saw three people vomiting in the streets. This was not a group. We were walking to the car, we first saw one young man holding on to a lamp post and throwing up his dinner, fifty yards further on there was a woman of about 20 doing the same. The last one was about ten yards from our car, he was sitting on the ground with a massive bottle of super-strength cider, throwing up everywhere. He could not have been more than about 15. When we go out in the evening now we tend to go to country pubs and restaurants. This is a great pity. Apart from the health implications for the people who are doing this, it restricts the freedoms of those who do not want to get blind drunk.
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