1/3 over 60 drink too much
Researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have published a study, which found that more than a third of drinkers who are 60 years of age and up consume excessive amounts of alcohol that could potentially put them at risk, especially if they drink in conjunction with certain diseases that they may have, or medications to which the patients are described.
Data was collected from 3,308 older patients who were all accessing primary care clinics found throughout Santa Barbara California, and published in the current online edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The report suggested that the number of individuals who drank in combination with comorbidities or medication was the same as the amount of patients who were put at higher risk by simply drinking alcohol alone.
- Grab the bottle, and you’ve got a problem
Other significant statistics included:
a) 34.7 percent (1,147) of older adults were at risk due to drinking alone or to a combination of alcohol and comorbidities or medications; 19.5 percent fell into multiple risk categories.
b) Of the participants who were at risk, 56.1 percent fell into at least two risk categories, and 31 percent fell into all three.
c) Participants that didn’t graduat from high school were 2.5 times more at-risk for drinking than those who had completed graduate school.
d) Respondents with annual household incomes from $80,000 to $100,000 were 1.5 times more likely to be at-risk than those with incomes below $30,000.
e) Respondents 80 years or older had half the odds of at-risk drinking as those between the ages of 60 and 64.
f) Oddly enough, Asians had less than half the odds of at-risk drinking as Caucasians.