A new study suggests that harmful drinking is becoming a "middle-class phenomenon" among wealthy, physically healthy, and active individuals that are over the age of 50.
Jose Iparraguirre, chief economist at the British charity Age UK, and his colleagues surveyed 9,251 people across England between 2008 and 2011. The participants were asked about their income, educational attainment, health, physical activity levels, loneliness depression, marital status and employment.
The analysis showed that wealthy, middle-aged people often eat healthy foods and exercise regularly, but they are also more likely to do harmful drinking compared to the less successful participants.
Harmful drinking, or higher risk drinking, is consuming more than 50 units of alcohol for men and more than 35 units for women, based on the guidelines set by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
On a positive note, the researchers didn't see any association between depression and harmful drinking.
The researchers added that harmful drinking seems to be generational trait because it is common among successful people, thus they coined harmful drinking as a "middle-class phenomenon." These successful people weren't able to consume that much alcohol when they were younger, so they started drinking heavily into older age.
"We can sketch - at the risk of much simplification - the problem of harmful alcohol drinking among people aged 50 or over in England as a middle-class phenomenon: people in better health, higher income, with higher educational attainment and socially more active are more likely to drink at harmful levels," the research paper said, the Daily Mail reported.
Dr. Eric Collins, physician-in-chief at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn., weighed in on why the middle-class people are drinking more. The successful ones have more leisure time, so they also get to drink during the day. The healthy people think that their healthful eating and exercising are enough to protect them from the harmful effects of drinking, while the wealthy people have more money to buy more alcohol, according to HealthDay News.
Excessive drinking has been linked to different health problems, as it causes damage to the heart, liver, pancreas and the immune system.
The study was published in the July 23 issue of the British Medical Journal.
