Medical Updates - Alcohol’s Effect on the Brain | Health News:
"Both smoking and drinking has been shown to affect the brain, damaging cells and synapses (neural connections) and high alcohol consumption is known to result in shrinking of the brain and cognitive deficit. However, researchers have discovered that even modest amounts of alcohol have the same negative effect."
The researchers found no protective affect on the normal, age-related shrinkage in brain volume. To the contrary, the more a person drank, the more their brain volume diminished.
But the finding was much stronger for women than men:
"Interestingly, although men were more likely than women to report being moderate or heavy drinkers, the link between brain volume and alcohol wasn’t as strong in men. For men, only those who were heavy drinkers had a smaller brain volume than those who consumed little or no alcohol where women, even moderate drinkers, had a smaller brain volume than abstainers or former drinkers. The researchers note this gender difference could be due to biological factors, including women’s smaller size and greater susceptibility to alcohol’s effects."
More coverage of this is available from
US News and World Report and
CNN.
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2 comments:
I wrote a book called "20 Good Reasons to Stay Sober (even if you don't have a drinking problem)". This article falls right in line with my case against alcohol use/abuse.
www.ReasonsToStaySober.com
Dave
Yeah, people often draw a lot of conclusions from studies to support their view. For example, alcohol was supposedly shown to be good for the heart, or at least red wine - but what damage would it do to the other organs? Similarly, frequent weekly sex was shown to be good for the prostate for men and the heart for both genders, but again a loss of vital fluids so often should likely cause other negative effects that aren't accounted for. There are noticeable pros and cons for nearly everything.
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