SEATTLE, Sep 11, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- TV shows like "Sex and the City" may
have glamorized drinking, but excessive alcohol is tied to overeating and
depression in young women, U.S. researchers say.
Lead author Carolyn McCarty, a research associate professor at the University of
Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute, and colleagues surveyed
393 men and 383 women at ages 24, 27 and 30 about their weight, alcohol use and
depression symptoms within the last year.
"When you look across time, alcohol use and obesity predicted later depression,"
McCarty said in a statement.
"The big picture here is that these disorders, though they're different in
manifestation and symptoms, appear to be related for some groups of women."
The study, published in the September/October issue of the journal General
Hospital Psychiatry, finds women who had alcohol use disorders at age 24 were
more than three times as likely to be obese at age 27, compared with women who
did not.
Women who were obese at age 27 were more than twice as likely to be depressed at
age 30, and women who were depressed at age 27 had an increased risk of alcohol
disorders at age 30. The same links did not appear in men over time.
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