For women, that means that tolerance is generally higher around menstruation, when estrogen levels. As you age, you may notice that alcohol affects you differently than it did in your 20s. Many people notice that they feel drunk after one or two drinks, or that they have a stronger hangover the next day. This change may be more pronounced in women who already have a lower alcohol tolerance than in men, due to factors such as body fat ratio, liver size, and liver enzyme levels.
In addition to this, age influences the impact of alcohol detoxification on women due to decreased estrogen levels. Low estrogen levels affect liver function and can cause cellular and tissue aging, as well as a deterioration of the immune response to injury and an imbalance between antioxidant formation and oxidative stress. In effect, this makes menopausal women more vulnerable to alcohol consumption, which, in addition to exacerbating the physiological impact of alcohol, can also contribute to worsening menopausal symptoms. I started getting injections this week, and when I had a few drinks the other day, they hit me much stronger than usual.
I was hydrating well and had eaten beforehand. I know there may be other reasons, but I've seen trans women on Reddit talking about how estrogen reduces alcohol tolerance. I always ruled it out because it had no source and it seemed unlikely, but I can't help wondering. Is this the case? Are there reliable scientific studies or explanations?A new study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that high estrogen levels can make alcohol more rewarding for female mice.
Less is known about the effects of the estradiol level on alcohol consumption in men, and only one report indicates a positive association between the level of estradiol in saliva and alcohol consumption in male adolescents (de Water et al. These results suggest that alcohol consumption may increase blood estradiol levels in postmenopausal women receiving estrogen replacement therapy, and this may increase the risk of breast cancer. In one experiment, researchers analyzed post-mortem brain tissue samples from female mice in two phases of the reproductive cycle: one characterized by high estrogen levels and the other characterized by low estrogen levels. In another experiment, researchers blocked estrogen receptors located in the ventral tegmental area of the brain (this is the region known to contain dopamine neurons and is associated with drug use) and tracked the behavior of female and male mice in the presence of alcohol.
Fourth, the empirical evidence for establishing a causal influence of sex hormones on alcohol consumption behavior was based primarily on animal studies (for example, no human studies directly investigated the effect of progestins on alcohol consumption or AUD). Dr. Melina Stasinou, a hormone specialist at The Marion Gluck Clinic, explains: “During menopause, alcohol consumption can alter the way the body produces, metabolizes and excretes hormones by affecting the function of certain organs and glands. The study establishes, for the first time, that circulating estrogens increase excessive alcohol consumption in women and contribute to the well-known sex differences in this behavior.
Like the impact of testosterone levels on alcohol consumption in men, the impact of estrogen levels on alcohol consumption in women seems to be more pronounced in adult women who drink socially, and especially during the luteal phase, when estradiol remains at a relatively prominent level (Harvey and Beckman 1985; Muti et al. However, no association was found between alcohol consumption and serum testosterone levels (total, free, bioavailable and dihydrotestosterone levels) in a study conducted with 127 older men (average age 69), which can be attributed to an age-related decrease in testosterone levels or other factors, such as increased levels of sex hormone transporting globulin (Wu et al. Alcohol consumption, diagnosis of AUD and symptoms of AUD), the period of development (prenatal, adolescence, or adulthood) in which associations between levels of sex hormones and current or later alcohol consumption in life, the source of the sex hormone measured, or the biological cause of the fluctuation of sex hormones and sex hormones investigated were examined. They found that reducing the number of estrogen receptors, such as estrogen receptor alpha, reduced drinking, but only in female mice.
The team identified the estrogen receptor that mediates this effect and determined that it is expressed in excited BNST neurons and in neurons in other brain regions that excite them. Follicle stimulating hormone (also known as FSH) and luteinizing hormone (also known as LH) may also be important in determining the effects of alcohol based on gender and drinking behavior. This once again demonstrates the close relationship between alcohol and hormones and the risk of excessive alcohol consumption. However, a study conducted on female rats showed a higher consumption of ethanol during right-handedness (when estrogen levels are low) than during proestrus (when estrogen levels are high) and during estrus (when estrogen levels are lower); Roberts et al.
