When people start substituting alcohol calories for food calories, a deeper issue is at hand and many health problems can arise.

This new trend, termed drunkorexia, occurs when female college students engage in a behavior of not eating in order to drink more. This causes them to feel the effects of alcohol faster and not worry about gaining weight.

This attitude toward a night out of drinking distorts one's view about the severity of binge drinking, especially when proper nutrition is not maintained.

The psychology behind drunkorexia stems from the high pressure from the media to diet. Drinking on college campuses is a common occurrence as well. Mixing these two factors together results in a dangerous, unhealthy behavior.

Emily Buckley, president of One in Four, an eating disorder awareness group, stresses the importance of healthy habits. She also encourages students to know the difference between a diet and an eating disorder.

"If someone feels the need to restrict their eating habits to 'allow' themselves to drink at night, this points to a more serious underlying issue," she said. "Why would a healthy, happy person decide they should not eat all day so they can make up their calories in beer?"

Drinking on an empty stomach alters the way the alcohol is regularly processed and leads to serious health risks.

"One study found that subjects who drank alcohol after a meal that included fat, protein and carbohydrates absorbed the alcohol about three times more slowly than when they consumed alcohol on an empty stomach," according to the National Institute of Health. "The empty stomach allows rapid passage of the alcohol into the small intestine where absorption is most efficient."

Binge drinking, according to the National Institute of Health, consists of five or more drinks in men and four or more drinks in women in a row on a single occasion. Women are affected differently from alcohol because they have smaller body masses and a higher fat proportion than men. Women are also more prone than men to heart damage, brain damage and liver disease because of alcohol.

Too much alcohol consumption in a short period of time can also lead to brown outs, black outs, alcohol poisoning or other mental and physical health problems later on.

While drunkorexia is not an actual eating disorder, this type of behavior can turn into a problematic health habit.

"This [drunkorexia] is a form of problematic eating," Dr. Becky Cook from the Counseling Center said. "But that alone doesn't have the criteria for an eating disorder, which has both physical and psychological components. Eating disorders are not just about the food behavior. Even though it sounds like anorexia is involved in the term, someone struggling with anorexia would not drink alcohol to begin with because they do not want the calories. The diagnosis of an eating disorder does not involve alcohol."

Many times, eating problems become an unhealthy coping mechanism and alcohol is sometimes used in the same way, mentioned Dr. Cook. Drunkorexia is an issue of how alcohol is consumed along with poor nutrition, which is an unhealthy behavior that should not be taken lightly.

For more health information on drinking or eating disorders, contact the Health Center at (937) 229-3131 or the Counseling Center at (937) 229-3141. For more information about One in Four, contact Emily Buckley at buckleeb@notes.udayton.edu.