Binge Drinking is Dangerous at Any Age

Binge drinking is often defined, at least in the USA, as the consumption of 5 or more drinks (4 for women) on “an occasion” (which can stretch to 24 hours).  It’s often considered the pastime of college students or even high-school seniors, but there’s evidence that older folk indulge, and when they do their health risks increase; ischemic stroke and osteoporosis are more likely in binge drinkers.  Now there’s a third condition to add – increased mortality in people with high blood pressure who binge.  The study, from South Korea, is published in the journal Stroke.      

A group of 6,100 people over 55 were followed for an average of 20 years.  Self-reporting was used to classify drinking habits.  Binge drinking was defined as taking 6 or more drinks on one occasion; 12 or more drinks on one occasion was considered ‘heavy binging’.  Individuals with a blood pressure of at least 168/100 were classified as having hypertension.

Approximately 15% of the men without hypertension were moderate binge drinkers, and 3% were heavy binge drinkers; hypertensive men had slightly higher frequencies of binge drinking.  Only 1% of women reported any binge drinking.  Further analyses showed the following:

Heavy binge drinking men with hypertension had a 12-times higher cardiovascular mortality rate compared with nondrinkers with normal blood pressure.

Moderate male bingers (6 or more drinks/occasion) had a 4-times higher cardiovascular mortality rate.

Both heavy binge drinking with normal blood pressure and hypertension in non-bingers showed increased cardiovascular mortality – about 2% increase for each.

Although heavy drinking is common in South Korea, it’s likely that the results here can be generalized outside Korea.  It’s probable that binge drinking increases blood pressure, arterial stiffness, and impairs function of the endothelium (the cells lining blood vessels).  This may correlate with the increased risk of ischemic stroke seen in the earlier study I mentioned.  While the obvious view suggests that raised blood pressure is likely to raise the risk of a bleed, leading to hemorrhagic stroke, in fact degenerative arterial disease (atherosclerosis) is a major risk factor for ischemic stroke.  The take-home message?  Avoid heavy and/or binge drinking, and get your blood pressure under control, and you’ll live quite a bit longer.