Just a few drinks 'may shrink brain'

[abdulhakeem]

By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 05/12/2003)


Drinking alcohol does not just befuddle the brain, it may also cause it to shrink, according to a study.

Researchers found that just a few drinks every week could be enough to cause a decline in grey matter by middle age.

The study showed that moderate drinking did not reduce the risk of strokes, despite past findings to the contrary.

Heavy drinking is known to be linked to the loss of brain cells but the study links brain decline to moderate alcohol consumption as well.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, used magnetic resonance imaging scans to look at the brains of 1,909 volunteers aged 55 years and older.

Brain shrinkage was seen in men and women, the researchers reported in Stroke.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/05/nbooz05.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/05/ixhome.html

[Tahiyah]

this should be posted everywhere! i hope pregnant women will realize this and think twice before drinking while carrying an unborn child.

[Gwenhwyvar]

Good post!
Glad ive never had alcohol ...... the smell of it... :vomit:

[AhmedSyed]

Originally posted by abdulhakeem
By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 05/12/2003)

Drinking alcohol does not just befuddle the brain, it may also cause it to shrink, according to a study.

Researchers found that just a few drinks every week could be enough to cause a decline in grey matter by middle age.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/05/nbooz05.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/05/ixhome.html

In that case French people must have very little grey matter in their brains--lol.

[amal]

ohh Ahmed:rotfl: The french doctors saying something different
http://www.lvo.com/GB/GASTRONOMIE/VINS/VCOM/VCOM9.HTML

[.: Anna :.]

Originally posted by AhmedSyed
In that case French people must have very little grey matter in their brains--lol. yeah & that explains why they think their new hijab ban is such a good idea :rolleyes:

[amal]

They will not ban the hijab. Its like to force the teen to go at school in miniskirt. The people have the right to choose how they are dressing. Its only a great convenience to french to make noise in europe.

[grober]

Actually, great many scientific studies show that consuming one to two drinks every day is actually GOOD fo you.

Life without alcohol? Perish the thought!!!!!!

[cruiser]

Originally posted by grober
Actually, great many scientific studies show that consuming one to two drinks every day is actually GOOD fo you.

Life without alcohol? Perish the thought!!!!!! :up:

[abdulhakeem]

Drinking problems 'are out of control'

By Celia Hall, Medical Editor
(Filed: 30/12/2003)

Cases of liver disease caused by excessive drinking soared by 75 per cent in six years and cost the NHS more than £65 million a year, the Liberal Democrats said yesterday. "Alcohol-related illness is spiralling out of control," said Paul Burstow, the party's health spokesman.

The Lib Dems attacked the Government for delaying its alcohol strategy for six years. "Ministers have done nothing to tackle the growing cost of excessive drinking both in terms of health and to the taxpayer," said Mr Burstow.

"The culture of binge drinking among young people, particularly women, is damaging their health. Much more needs to be done to alert people to the health risks." He added: "The Government's alcohol strategy was announced in 1998 but still has not been published."

According to the Government's own statistics in 2002-03, 151,086 "bed days" were taken up in NHS hospitals by people with alcohol-related problems.

The Lib Dems said that not only were more people being treated for liver diseases but that their problems were more severe, needing longer stays in hospitals.

In 1996-97 the average length of stay in hospital for a patient with alcoholic liver disease was 12.7 days. By 2002-03 this was 14.1 days.

Six years ago hospital consultants gave 10,903 treatments for alcohol-related liver diseases compared with 19,130 in 2002-03. A government report in September estimated that 17 million working days were lost to hangovers and the cost of treating alcohol-related injury and illness was £1.7 billion.

Recommendations from the Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy group were expected at the end of this year, for implementation next year.

• Almost half of all revellers planning to take drugs on New Year's Eve will mix alcohol with a cocktail of illegal substances, a poll revealed yesterday.

The findings were announced by Frank, the Government's campaign to fight drug misuse. Partygoers are being urged to avoid mixing alcohol and drugs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/30/nbooz30.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/30/ixhome.html

[abdulhakeem]

Alcohol's erroneous ways revealed

19:00 07 November 02
NewScientist.com news service

Just two glasses of wine can ruin your brain's ability to detect its own errors, and to correct them. The finding helps explain why alcohol so severely impairs driving ability, and casts new light on the basic action of the drug on the brain, says a Dutch team.

"We all know on a subjective level what alcohol does - we lose control a little bit, we become more error-prone. But this research gives a new perspective on how alcohol has these effects," researcher Richard Ridderinkhof of the University of Amsterdam told New Scientist.

Ridderinkhof's team studied people performing a lab task designed to generate a high proportion of errors. They found that alcohol had a significant effect on activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region known to be involved in detecting errors and in signalling a need to adjust performance after an error.

Just two units of alcohol reduced by a third the amplitude of the brainwave generated from this region following an error. "This means people either detect errors less often or less efficiently, or both," Ridderinkhof says.

Lane drifting

But the alcohol also affected people's ability to modify their performance following an error: "With alcohol, this response is so diminished it is almost completely gone," he told New Scientist

It is not difficult to see how such alcohol-fuelled brain changes could be disastrous for drivers, Ridderinkhof adds: "Think of drifting a bit into another lane. Then, you would have to correct this error quickly and maybe slow down a bit to make sure you don't make similar further errors" The new work shows why alcohol reduces this ability.

However, other effects of alcohol on the brain, such as impaired reaction times, are also involved in explaining the danger of drink-driving.

Ridderinkhof team is now investigating the effects of caffeine and other drugs on the ACC. The brain transmitter dopamine is important for generating the error-related responses. So drugs that interfere with dopamine, such as amphetamines, might also interfere with these responses, he says.

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1076929)

Emma Young


http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993031