There’s no getting around it, the population is getting older… what’s more, these numbers are only expected to increase in the years to come. In fact, by 2030, one in five U.S. residents will be over 65 years old. And since more than half of older adults report themselves as social drinkers, research that looks at alcohol impairment and aging found that the effects of drinking alcohol is very different for older people.
The study, a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted by University of Florida researchers and published in the March 2009 issue of The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, is based on research that involved both older (aged 50 to 74) and younger (aged 25 to 35) subjects who were social drinkers and nonsmokers.
Some subjects from each age group drank a moderate amount of alcohol while others consumed non-alcoholic, placebo beverages.
Each group was then asked to take a test at 25 and again at 75 minutes after drinking the beverage.
The tests called for subjects to use a line to connect letters and numbers in order. The exam helps to measure planning, visual and motor coordination as well as the ability to move from one task to the next.
Participants also rated how intoxicated they felt, and how much they thought the alcohol hurt their performance on the test.
And while peak breath-alcohol measures were similar between the younger and older groups – showing they metabolize alcohol in similar ways, older subjects who had drunk alcohol took longer to finish the test than the younger participants did.
Soon after having the alcohol, older subjects took an average five seconds longer to complete the test than those who didn’t have an alcoholic drink.
The non-drinking subjects also saw no difference in test performance related to age.
“That doesn’t sound like much, but five seconds is a big difference if you’re in a car and need to apply the brakes,” researcher Sara Jo Nixon, a psychiatry professor at the University of Florida’s McKnight Brain Institute explains. “It can mean the difference between a wreck, and not-a-wreck.”
What’s more troubling, older drinkers were found to be less aware that they were impaired, especially at the 25 minute mark after drinking.
At the 75 minute point, the older drinkers reported themselves more impaired, though they performed just about the same as the older people who hadn’t drunk any alcohol, so waiting does make a difference.
So, all the more reason to follow up the alcoholic drinks you enjoy as part of your lunch or dinner with dessert and coffee.
Allow some time to pass so that your body has chance to metabolize the alcohol you’ve taken in, and you’ll be better able to react and perform when needed, on the road or elsewhere.
Continues below…
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Older Drinkers Less Likely To Recognize How Alcohol Affects Them continued…
Of course, the best and safest route if you’ve been drinking, even a little bit earlier in the evening, is to hand your car keys to a designated driver.
The statistics speak for themselves. An alcohol related car accident kills someone every 31 minutes, with a person being hurt every 2 minutes.
Much more common over the holiday season, drunk driving is the leading criminal cause of death in the United States, and in 2007 nearly 13,000 (a decrease of 3.7% from 2006) people died in car accidents that involved alcohol-impaired drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. So, it’s important for all drinkers to be aware of the effects of drinking alcohol and take the neccessary steps to stop drunk driving.
