Alcohol consumption and physical symptoms in a Mexican American population.

The negative health consequences of alcohol consumption are well established. The present study examines whether alcohol consumption is also associated with a series of self-reported physical symptoms. Analyses were performed on data from a three-generation study of Mexican Americans. Using four measures of alcohol consumption we found that alcohol consumption was related to physical symptoms only in the younger generation. While drinking levels in the older generation did not have sufficient variance to enable the assessment of their effects on symptoms, drinking levels in the middle generation were comparable to those in the younger generation. We hypothesized that the lack of association in the middle generation may reflect increased tolerance due to longer exposure to alcohol, to possible reduction of alcohol consumption by some middle-aged persons because of health problems, and to due possible removal from observation of certain middle-aged men whose heavy drinking led to health problems. Although alcohol consumption in the younger generation was not strongly associated with either psychosomatic or infectious symptoms, it was strongly related to upper respiratory symptoms among younger males. Among younger women, alcohol consumption was moderately related to physical symptoms with no symptom constellation having a particularly strong association with alcohol consumption.