Women more likely to binge drink when estrogen levels are higher, new study finds
Women more likely to binge drink when estrogen levels are higher, new study finds
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‘Estrogen has such powerful effects on so many behaviours, particularly in females. So, it makes sense that it would also modulate drinking,’ report author says. Women are more likely to binge drink when they have higher levels of estrogen, new research has suggested.
![[Previous research revealed British women top the list as the biggest female binge drinkers in the world]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/05/17/13/Wine.jpg)
The study, by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, discovered women’s relationship to binge drinking is linked to their estrogen levels with the hormone causing them to consume large amounts of alcohol in their first half an hour of drinking.
Researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Natures Communications, found for what is believed to be the first time that estrogen contributes to men and women’s different approaches to binge drinking. Dr Kristen Pleil, a senior author who is associate professor of pharmacology, said: “Estrogen has such powerful effects on so many behaviours, particularly in females. So, it makes sense that it would also modulate drinking.”.
She explained a great deal less is known about “what drives alcohol drinking behaviour in females because most studies of alcohol use have been done in males”. When a female takes her first sip from the bottle containing alcohol, those neurons go crazy.
Researchers looked into hormone levels during the cycles of female mice before giving them alcohol - discovering that female mice drink much more when they have high levels of estrogen than on days when they have low estrogen. It comes after a 2021 study by Dr Pleil and her team found neurons in a brain region named the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) were more excitable in female mice than in their male counterparts - with this directly linked to their binge drinking.
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