According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), women are more susceptible than men to alcohol-induced blackouts, memory impairments, cirrhosis, and damage to the nerves and heart. You may already know that people with smaller bodies aren’t able to tolerate as much alcohol, as they reach a high blood alcohol concentration more quickly (per Stanford University). There is more to this story. Women react to alcohol faster than men, even though they have the same body size. It may be because they produce less alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), an enzyme that breaks down alcohol (per The New England Journal of Medicine).
For the above reasons and others, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that women have no more than 1 drink per day. You can be considered binge-drinking if you consume more than three drinks in a 24-hour period. Because of the varying levels of alcohol in different types of beverages, the NIAAA defines “a drink” as 12 ounces of regular beer, 8 ounces of malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.