Why Your Alcohol Tolerance Changes During Menopause

If you have started to notice that your tolerance for alcohol has changed during menopause, you’re not alone.

Dr Naomi Potter, menopause specialist and founder of menopause Care, says that even though this is extremely common, it’s something that people are frequently enough reluctant to speak about openly.

“It’s something that women are a little bit sheepish to admit to, but it’s still very common,” says Potter. “It can present itself in a number of different ways, but most women report that their tolerance goes down.

“A lot of women say that they used to be able to drink half a bottle of wine and be able to function well and hold a proper conversation and not feel drunk, whereas now they tolerate it a lot less in terms of how drunk they get and tend to also get much worse hangovers.

“It can also make them feel very anxious so they don’t actually enjoy the feeling of having a drink.”

But what are the main reasons behind this shift – and what can we do to manage it over the party season?

What biological changes during menopause might impact our tolerance to alcohol?

“As we get older, especially once you start hitting your 40s, pretty much everybody’s metabolism slows,” says Dr Alisha esmail, GP and menopause specialist at London Gynaecology. “So, the way your body processes any kind of input into the body changes, especially alcohol.

“Our body tends to break down the alcohol more slowly, it stays in the body for longer, therefore lots of people experience side effects such as feeling it more and experience lingering side effects of it for longer the next day.”

Other age-related changes, such as a natural change in body composition, can also have an effect.

“Because our metabolism slows, our body composition can change later in life and during menopause,” explains Esmail. “Your body naturally stores more fat then muscle as you get older, and fat doesn’t absorb alcohol or store alcohol as well as muscle.

“In addition, the liver, which is the main organ that breaks down alcohol, gets a bit less efficient as we get older.”

Hormone fluctuations during menopause then adds another layer onto this.

“Oestrogen pretty much affects every part of your body, including how your body processes alcohol and just toxins in general,” says Esmail. “So, as your levels of oestrogen go up and down during menopause, the way you process alcohol is not going to be as efficient as it used to be.”