CNN today reported on a new study that confrims what I have seen on SPECT scans for a long time ““alcohol is not a health food! Any amount of alcohol can decrease brain size. I like to say when it comes to the brain, size matters.
People who drink alcohol “” even the moderate amounts that help prevent heart disease “” have a smaller brain volume than those who do not, according to a study in the Archives of Neurology.
While a certain amount of brain shrinkage is normal with age, greater amounts in some parts of the brain have been linked to dementia. “Decline in brain volume “” estimated at 2 percent per decade “” is a natural part of aging,” says Carol Ann Paul, who conducted the study when she was at the Boston University School of Public Health. She had hoped to find that alcohol might protect against such brain shrinkage. “However, we did not find the protective effect,” says Paul, who is now an instructor in the neuroscience program at Wellesley College. “In fact, any level of alcohol consumption resulted in a decline in brain volume.”
In the study, Paul and colleagues looked at 1,839 healthy people with an average age of about 61. The patients underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain and reported how much they tippled.
Overall, the more alcohol consumed, the smaller the brain volume, with abstainers having a higher brain volume than former drinkers, light drinkers (one to seven drinks per week), moderate drinkers (eight to 14 drinks per week), and heavy drinkers (14 or more drinks per week). Men were more likely to be heavy drinkers than women. But 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.
In women, even moderate drinkers had a smaller brain volume than abstainers or former drinkers.
It’s not clear why even modest amounts of alcohol may shrink the brain, although alcohol is “known to dehydrate tissues, and constant dehydration can have negative effects on any sensitive tissue,” says Paul.
“We always knew that alcohol at higher dosages results in shrinking of the brain and cognitive deficit,” says Dr. Petros Levounis, M.D., director of the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke’s “” Roosevelt Hospital Center, who was not involved in the study. “What is new with this article is that it shows brain shrinking at lower doses of alcohol.”
Less is better.
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Good article !!
As a recovering alcoholic now 18 mos, my late husband & I discovered that any/all alcohol contained sufficient capabilities to destroy any number of health issue’s.
We were both permanently hit with Grand-Mal Seizures, and in my attempts to spread the word, have discovered there are many with the same affliction, many with near complete deafness/blindness, some with rotted livers, some with horrific heart attacks. None having any possible cure what-so-ever !
And all from the almightly drink !!
Many individuals, like myself, are trying to somehow convince our Government Leaders, to pass mandatory laws, for each and every liquor container to have large health warning labels. While my age of 50+er’s cannot correct what we’ve allowed to happen to our body’s, we’ve got to somehow alert our youth, otherwise, when we’re all in old folks homes, being spoon fed & diaperred, who’ll be taking over the many Managerial positions in society ?
Well that sounds like an interesting study, but it certainly does not prove that small amounts of alcohol shrink the brain. Correlation does not prove causation. People that don’t drink are probably healthier in general – did they account for other lifestyle factors such as exercise, phytochemical consumption, emotional intelligence, etc.?
If dehydration is the only hypothesis they can come up with, then this is a disappointing study that reveals little new information.
I’ll be sure to drink a water with my beer next time. Cheers!
Your work is so crucial in supporting the prevention work I do in all our schools in Schoharie County and it is the turning point for the adults in our community who think alcohol for their teens is okay (afterall they drank at 18). Thak you so much. Several folks in the Albany, NY area have wanted you to come speak but can’t afford the cost. Is there any room there?
Thak you for all do!
Norine Hodges
SCCASA
Excellent point about dehydration. Many people with alcoholism have increases in brain volume following prolonged abstinence, indicating that much, if not most, of the reduced volume at admission was due to dehydration. Most show no permanent loss of cognitive functioning. The authors also did not control for depression, which can reduce brain volume.
The findings do not support the conclusion that any amount of alcohol shrinks the brain. As shown in Figure 2 of the article, only men who drank more than 14 drinks per week had significant loss in brain volume. While there was a statistically significant smaller brain volume among women who drank 1-14 drinks per week, those who drank 14 or more drinks did not have a statistically significant smaller brain volume. This could very well be an artifact of the small sample size of women drinking 14 or more drinks, but this study does not tell us if this is the case. Last, the study did not examine whether or not there was any deficit in cognitive functioning.
Dr. Amen, have you submitted your findings on drinking and smaller brain volume for publication? I do not see this listed among your publications.
I find it incredulous that public health researchers and MD’s do not have an answer to “Why the brain shrinks with alcohol?â€
Thirty years ago, I learned in a college biology course that alcohol attaches to red blood cells instead of oxygen molecules. Therefore, upon consumption of alcohol, the brain is being depleted of oxygen and that the brain cells die off. Our cerebral cortex gets affected most notably first; but if we continue consumption, our other brain functions can be affected. People pass out because their brain is unable to keep them upright – all the oxygen is being used to keep the heart and lungs functioning. If a person does not pass out and consume too much in a short time, death occurs due to a lack of oxygen.
People may have differing metabolisms that help them recover from a night of alcohol consumption, but my understanding is that the “buzz†is partly from lack of oxygen; therefore, some brain cells are dying. Obviously, our ability to regenerate cells is limited; thus shrinkage will occur as time passes. Alcohol consumption will only boost the amount of cell damage, not slow it down.
Thank you for your updated website that is family friendly/professional friendly. Caring professionals who clearly communicate with families online providing hope are hard to find. You make our task so much easier!
Blessings and have a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Suzanne and Clayton Crymes
Thank you so much for putting this information on the blog. I am a teacher and I have a copy of your brain video for teens. I find this information to be a great supplement when dealing with students who think there isn’t anything wrong with consuming a lot of alcohol.