As if getting hit on in bars wasn’t enough to worry about.

Female drinkers are at a higher risk than men for long-term health issues resulting from alcohol use, health experts say. Liver disease is the most common concern, but doesn’t outweigh risks for heart and brain problems.

Coleen Moore, coordinator of resource development for the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, said that with the different metabolism functions adherent to gender, women are more vulnerable to liver disease.

“Usually it’s someone that has been drinking for a while and in excess,” she said. “Because of that, their body doesn’t know how to metabolize it. The liver is able to metabolize an ounce of alcohol an hour. When we’re drinking, our liver doesn’t catch up with what we’re putting in. When individuals who are drinking in excess daily, that’s when their liver experiences the damage because the liver can’t catch up with what a person is putting into their body.”

Amy Franklin, a health educator for NIU Health Enhancement, said the differences between men and women’s bodies contribute largely to how alcohol is metabolized. Blood volume is used to measure a person’s blood-alcohol content, or BAC.

“In general, men tend to be larger than women,” she said. “The bigger they are, the more they weigh. The more blood they have, the more diluted the alcohol is, the lesser the effect will be on their body.”

When those big, bulky men down multiple beers in an evening, their time at the gym doesn’t just give them a pretty physique.

“In general, men tend to have more muscle than other types of tissue,” Franklin said. “Because muscle has more water in it than other types of tissue, say fat issue, men tend to have more water in their bodies. Overall, the alcohol is more diluted in men.”

The human stomach contains an enzyme called gastric alcohol dehydrogenase. Franklin said men tend to have more, lessening the impact of alcohol.

“It starts to break the alcohol down before the alcohol has much of a chance to get into the blood stream,” she said. “It starts to metabolize the alcohol sooner. The stomachs of men metabolize more of the alcohol than the stomachs of women.”

Moore agreed with Franklin’s views. It’s like putting a ball into two different-sized pails; the ball will displace the water in the smaller pail more than it will in the larger.

“Typically women who are chronic in their alcoholism have some of the similar issues that men do, but what happens is the rate in which they have those issues is much quicker,” she said.

Based on her experiences at the IIAR, Moore said alcohol can produce an effect on the brain similar to dementia.

“We’ve had individuals that have been diagnosed with alcoholic dementia as a result of their chronic drinking,” she said. “They have a difficult time remembering and comprehending, similar to what someone experiences with dementia, but it’s a result of their drinking. It’s pushed them into dementia. I’ve had a couple clients here that have had alcoholic dementia and we had to refer them to a nursing home.”

Alcohol isn’t exactly friendly to the human heart over time, either.

“Individuals that come into our program that have chronic alcoholism typically have high blood pressure,” she said. “A lot of times when they stop drinking and withdraw from alcoholism, their blood pressure goes down and they no longer need medication.”

However, when someone who drinks chronically stops without the help of medication, he or she is more likely to die from alcohol withdrawal than withdrawal from heroin, Moore said.

“If a person dies from using heroin, it’s because they’ve overdosed,” Moore said. “Someone can actually die from [alcohol withdrawal] if it’s someone who’s been using alcohol on a normal basis.”