Alcohol acts as a source of empty calories and is a drug that affects your judgment and emotions. But in larger amounts, alcohol is a poison that affects every cell in the body, says Dr. Blume. Alcohol is a very tiny molecule carried in the bloodstream, and unlike other drugs, it's so small that it gets completely inside every cell. In fact, women may be affected by alcohol sooner than men because we usually weigh less and have less of a key enzyme that metabolizes alcohol in our stomachs. So we end up with higher concentrations of alcohol in our blood when we drink.
Women reach a point of serious damage on fewer drinks per day and over fewer years than men.
For example, alcohol can momentarily suppress production of growth hormone, which keeps our cells vigorous and active as we age, says Mary Ann Emanuele, M.D., professor of endocrinology at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago. Studies show that these changes do reverse after several hours. However, we don't know if continued heavy drinking can cause permanent suppression of the hormone. Excess alcohol consumption also generates free radicals, chemically unstable oxygen molecules that can damage the heart and liver and accelerate the aging process throughout the body, says Eric Rimm, Sc.D., a nutritional epidemiologist at the Harvard University School of Public Health in Boston. Drinking heavily, for instance, severely damages a woman's skin.