Think before you clink: it's not just young people getting drunk.
There's no level playing field when it comes to drinking - our age and gender all make a difference to how we handle alcohol.
Let's start with being female. Suppose you're a woman sharing a bottle of wine with a man. By the time you've each polished off two glasses, the concentration of alcohol in your blood will be higher than his - that's because a) women produce less of an enzyme needed to break alcohol down and b) women's bodies are composed of less water so there's less fluid to dilute the alcohol. Meanwhile, if you're under 18, alcohol can affect your still developing brain - raising the risk of memory and learning problems.
But there's now a growing recognition that tolerance to alcohol also changes with age and that older people need a louder public health message about safer drinking -especially as many over-60s show no signs of slowing their drinking down.
"When we looked at data from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey released last year, we didn't expect to find that more than 30 per cent of people over 60 were drinking at risky levels," says Professor Ann Roche, Director of the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction at Flinders University.
"But our image of older people is outdated. A new old age has crept up on us and it's one where older people expect to lead a full, active life that includes socialising and alcohol."
What's also different about getting older in 2016 is that many women in their 50s, 60s and 70s are starting to drink when they didn't drink before, says Roche - something she attributes partly to our increasingly 'alcogenic' environment. Clutching a glass of wine isn't just something that goes with dinner or a social event - you could be sipping a sauv blanc at the hairdresser or the movies.
So how does ageing change how we cope with alcohol? With age comes a drop in the body's water content, along with a decrease in gastric alcohol dehydrogenase - the enzyme that helps break alcohol down - says Dr Celia Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in Addiction Studies at Edith Cowan University's School of Medical and Health Sciences, and author of a new fact sheet, Alcohol and Older Australians from the Government of WA which explains how ageing makes us more vulnerable to alcohol's effects.
"This means that when older people drink, the concentration of alcohol in their blood increases more quickly so they can feel tipsy - or be more at risk of - accidents or falls. Potentially these changes can affect women more because their body's water content and production of the enzyme are lower to begin with. But most older people don't realise this," she says.
Alcohol isn't a good mix with some medications that older people may take either - nor with some health conditions such as high blood pressure that are more common with age. Benzodiazapines prescribed for sleeplessness can interact with alcohol and increase the risk of falls, for example, while too much alcohol can exacerbate high blood pressure, making it harder to treat.
We need more public awareness about these issues because this new old age can go on for a very long time, Roche points out.
"We're looking at a future where by 2050, 40,000 of us will be living to one hundred. We're living longer and for many people the years of retirement are stretching to 30 or 40 years," she says.
For regular drinkers this can mean a lot of extra drinking years and we can't ignore the fact that decades of regular tippling may raise the risk of some cancers - including cancer of the breast, bowel and oesophagus - in people who are already at increased risk because of their age, she adds.
"But we don't want to be alarmist. In general, older people now are healthier than in previous generations and most aren't drinking at risky levels," says Dr Julie Dare, Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion at Edith Cowan University,
There's also research into longevity in the Blue Zones - those areas in the world such as parts of Sardinia, Greece, Costa Rica and Japan where life expectancy is higher and where one or two drinks daily is one characteristic of these long lived people.
Still, before you uncork a bottle, this drinking style is just one of a cluster of healthy habits including a high intake of plant foods - and small amounts of meat - a physically active lifestyle and having strong social ties. And in case you think a little alcohol is essential for a longer life, the town of Loma Linda in California ranks as a Blue Zone - and it's home to a high concentration of Seventh Day Adventists who don't drink at all.
