It is well known that binge drinking isn't exactly a good idea. But in an age where more and more college students are drinking to excess, has it become an epidemic? Binge drinking is defined by consuming enough alcohol to increase the blood alcohol content to twice the legal limit of 0.08 within a time period of two hours. For women, this typically involves 4 to 5 drinks, and for men it's about 6 to 7. When alcoholic beverages are being marketed as sweeter and tastier, this makes monitoring alcohol consumption much more difficult for young adults. Companies like Smirnoff and Angry Orchard are releasing vodka that tastes like bubblegum and cider that tastes like apple juice, making it much more difficult to actually taste the alcohol that you are ingesting. This has led to an increase in the rate of binge drinking among adolescents and young adults.
Toni Pak and her colleagues conducted a study using rats to examine whether binge drinking in adolescence can produce changes in physiological stress reactions later in life. Previous studies had already demonstrated the ability of binge drinking episodes to affect the immediate physiological stress response by decreasing levels of cortisol released. To test this effect later in life, Pak pre-exposed one group of rats to binge drinking levels of alcohol consumption during adolescence and later compared them to a control group which only received water during adolescence. She then administered alcohol to both groups as adults, and measured their physiological stress response afterward.
Results showed that the rats that had been pre-exposed to binge drinking during adolescence showed baseline levels of cortisol that were already lower than normal, meaning they were habituated to high levels of alcohol when they were young and the levels stayed low. Then, when they had an acute binge as an adult, this pre-exposure to alcohol not only affected the HPA axis long-term in the baseline levels of cortisol but also how they responded to alcohol exposure later in life. Alcohol exposure in the control group showed no affect on the HPA axis, meaning it was the adolescent binge pattern of drinking that is responsible for this stress response effect.
Pak demonstrated just one of the many detrimental physiological health effects of binge drinking, which is of great importance at a time when about 1/3 of college students in the United States engage in binge drinking patterns. This rate of excessive drinking causes long-term health issues, and an organization at Texas A&M called LessThanUThink is working to raise awareness and combat this normalized level of intoxication. Their focus is the physical and social problems that arise as a result of binge drinking. and they seek to combat the factors that drive students to binge drink. Because research has shown that students do not respond well to scare tactics such as images of victims of drunk driving car accidents, LessThanUThink members seek to educate students and steer them away from binge drinking through fun activities, games, and events like karaoke night.
You can read more about LessThanUThink's program HERE
References:
http://www.theeagle.com/news/a_m/campaign-aims-to-raise-binge-drinking-awareness-at-texas-a/article_afc6d6ca-cfae-5e29-9baf-5063e4964803.html
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