In today’s Ask Jessica column: A women in perimenopause asks: I can’t handle alcohol anymore. Why? We discuss the reasons behind a lower alcohol tolerance in midlife, worsening hangovers, and discuss ways to handle it.
Ask Jessica is an advice column for women in midlife. We cover all things related to midlife from changing bodies to career transitions to parenting teens to sandwich generation challenges to shifts in marital or life partnerships and everything in between. My hope is that in sharing these questions and answers I can women as we face the midlife journey together. Got a question or challenge you would like me to address? Fill out this form to submit your issue! Want to see the answers to other questions, check out our archive here.
I Can’t Handle Alcohol Anymore. Why??
HEY JESSICA: I can’t handle alcohol anymore. Why?? Last Friday night, I had 1 ½ glasses of red wine while my husband and I watched a movie and ate pizza. But I woke up the next day and felt hung over. I was like “this is crazy, I did not have much to drink” but I really felt it. Then on Sunday night, we went to a birthday party. Again, I had some wine, about 2 glasses, and I felt miserable the next day. I looked it up online and it said that around age 50, our bodies change and women become more sensitive to alcohol. I am only 47 and still get my period every month but I am wondering if there is a connection between the fact that I can’t handle alcohol anymore and perimenopause. Beyond that, the deeper question for me is how to change my habits? ~A Wine Lover
DEAR WINE LOVER: First off, you are not the only woman facing the reality that she can’t handle alcohol anymore, which luckily means you are not alone! In fact, adults of both genders can experience worsening hangovers as they they get older, it just happens that women get some bonus side effects, too. Why does this happen to most people as they age? Well, as we get older, the enzymes in our liver that process alcohol become less active, which means that alcohol remains in our bodies for longer. Women always have less of this enzyme than men (this is one of the reasons that women tend to have a lower alcohol tolerance than men), so we get the added bonus of experiencing hangovers later in life more than men. In addition, it’s harder to stay hydrated as we get older and since alcohol is a natural diuretic, it can leave us further dehydrated (and, therefore, more hungover). So that’s for everyone. For some women in particular, though, there’s the added bonus of wine (and sometimes beer) being even more problematic as they can trigger certain menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats. This is due to the presence of sulphites, histamines, and tyramine in the wine. Some women find that they do better with hard liquor rather than beer or wine (although go carefully, because the alcohol content is higher!), others find that white wine is OK but red wine is harder to handle (more sulphites), and still others realize that they sleep and feel better when they cut it out completely and that is worth it to them. In short, it is all about the individual.
In terms of the second part of your question, whether and how to avoid drinking all together, I’ve encountered women who have handled this question in a wide variety of ways. Some decide to cut alcohol out completely. To help with this, I have found that it’s nice to come up with a replacement drink to enjoy instead — a sparkling juice or one of the now more widely available non-alcoholic beers or wines are great options. Other women I know have decided to cut alcohol out for most days of the week, but enjoy a limited amount on one or two nights of the week. This can give your liver more time to recuperate and also allow you some flexibility, if that is important to you.
Personally, a few years ago I started having some really wicked hangovers and absolutely wretched night sweats after nights of hanging out (drinking) with friends. After it happened a few times, I realized that something had to shift, so I started paying attention to what were my triggers. I discovered that if I drank red wine or hard liquor, I was pretty much guaranteed to have a hangover and practically drown in my own sweat, but that if I took a couple specific actions I was able to enjoy up to three glasses of white wine without any nasty repercussions. So, now, on regular nights I have one glass of white wine, and on nights when I am out with friends, I limit myself to no more than three glasses of wine (two if they are big pours), I make sure to drink a large glass of water in between each glass of wine, and I make sure to eat enough (I have found that when I am socializing I often forget to eat enough and an empty stomach is the quickest way for me to get a hangover).
So, I would encourage you to look back on the nights when this has happened to you (or future nights when it happens again) and pay attention to 1) what type of alcohol you’re drinking, 2) how much you have, 3) how much water you’re drinking, and 4) how much food is in your stomach. Once you have that information in your back pocket, figuring out the next steps might become just a little bit easier.