Bingeing grandparents
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
People over 50 binge drink, too. Dan Blazer of Duke University saw that in national survey data on almost 11,000 people ages 50 and older. Blazer found 20 percent of men and 6 percent of women had five or more drinks at a time at some point in the past year.
[Dan Blazer speaks] "This was surprising because we typically think of binge drinking as being a problem perhaps of college-age students or young adults, and we don't typically think of grandfathers and grandmothers binge drinking."
Historically, younger people have been more likely than older ones to binge. But the researchers think binge drinking has been getting more frequent among people ages 50 to 64. They also say it was associated with tobacco and illicit drug use.
The study in the American Journal of Psychiatry was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.
Last revised: September, 23 2009