Time to put down your glass of bubbly, because there’s nothing to celebrate in the latest news about alcohol and aging. As we’ve written in previous posts, there is mounting evidence that even small amounts of alcohol can be harmful to your health. That’s coupled with data that shows drinking alcohol, including binge drinking, may be on the rise among older adults. According to a brand new article in Fortune, binge drinking among older adults has been on the rise for the last decade, setting up older adults for such serious health risks as falls with severe injuries (the CDC reports that nearly 40% of falls involve alcohol) along with increased risk for such health problems as heart attack, stroke, liver disease, diabetes, and depression. Loneliness and social isolation may be one important cause of this uptick in binge drinking, which is medically referred to as “alcohol use disorder,” (defined as the impaired ability to control alcohol use despite its harmful consequences). The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that 20 percent of adults aged 60-64 and 12 percent over age 65 have problems with alcohol use disorder. To better understand whether you or a loved one may suffer from this disorder, take this short screening test here.

This worrisome data about alcohol use disorder among older adults comes at a time when the evidence is mounting about the harms caused by alcohol ingestion, even in small amounts. For example, a recent expert report from the American Association for Cancer Research makes clear that alcohol is significantly implicated in the diagnosis of new cancer cases. 40% of all cancers are associated with modifiable risk factors and excessive alcohol intake is one of those factors. In fact, 5.4% of all cancers are attributable to alcohol use. (Parenthetically, the WHO reports that alcohol played a role in 2.6 million deaths in 2019, which was about 4.7% of all deaths worldwide.) For more on the connection between cancer and alcohol consumption, click here. However, public awareness of this harmful connection between alcohol and cancer is very low, even though, as one expert made clear, “alcohol probably raises the risk of cancer ‘from the first drop.’”

There is also more data connecting alcohol consumption and heart health. In another new study earlier this summer from Britain, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers were able to rebut the long-held assumption that there’s something “heart healthy” in the consumption of alcohol. This study found that even among light or moderate drinkers, there was no reduction in heart disease deaths that could be associated with alcohol consumption. Previous studies have left the impression that moderate drinking might be associated with heart health benefits but the methodology of those studies now appears flawed, as the studies rarely involved people who never drank but instead used groups of patients who stopped drinking, often because of poor health, or were just social drinkers. In essence, older studies had a bias that skewed the results to appear as though there was some benefit from moderate drinking. 

We also have more evidence, published in eClinical Medicine, reporting a direct causal connection between alcohol use and dementia in current drinkers. This study makes clear that absolutely no amount of drinking is safe for avoiding an elevated risk of dementia.  And finally, another new study reports that alcohol use in older adults is responsible for doubling the risk of a brain bleed from a fall, something for which older adults are already at increased risk. In sum, it appears that there is no safe level of drinking for older adults who want to maintain their physical and cognitive health as they get older. For a good summary of the negative health effects we know are attributable to alcohol, raise a glass of ginger ale and read here.