Is Moderate Alcohol Consumption Safe For The Brain
Some research has indicated that individuals who drank in moderation were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or any other form of dementia than those who consumed zero alcohol.
Some protective effects of alcohol have been seen on the brain, such as reduced thickness of blood and increased levels of healthy cholesterol in the body. Both of these effects have been suggested to help lower the risk of developing dementia.
However, the evidence produced by studies that link moderate alcohol consumption with a lower likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease does have some flaws. For example, many of these studies classified ‘non-drinkers’ as both people who have given up alcohol consumption due to health reasons and lifetime non-drinkers.
These two subsets of people are actually quite different as people who have given up drinking for health reasons may have already had alcohol-induced brain damage, so are more likely to be similar to people in the heavy-drinking category than lifetime non-drinkers.
Therefore the mixing of these distinct populations into one study group may have skewed the results and lead to conclusions which overstate the potential risk of not drinking alcohol to developing Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Light To Moderate Amounts Of Alcohol
Moderate alcohol drinking is classified as drinking one alcoholic drink a day for women and two a day for men. Light drinking describes those who drink less than moderate drinkers but more than those who totally abstain from alcohol.
In a study that involved over 3000 adults over the age of 75, light to moderate drinking was associated with a 42% lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease and a 29% lower risk of all types of dementia.
One study found that among women who were over the age of 90, a decrease in alcohol consumption was associated with an increase in the development of mild cognitive impairment and dementia.
Another study considered how alcohol consumption affected people with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment . This study demonstrated that light to moderate alcohol consumption was associated with a decreased chance of mild cognitive impairment progressing into full dementia. Participants who never drank alcohol had a higher chance of developing dementia than those who were light to moderate drinkers, while heavy drinkers were the most likely to progress to dementia.
Alcohol Alzheimers And Amyloid Plaques
A recent study on alcohol and Alzheimers revealed that consuming large amounts of alcohol may interfere with your brains natural maintenance processes. Dr. Douglas Feinstein, lead study author, and professor at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine suggested that alcohol inhibits the ability of microglia to successfully rid the brain of amyloid plaqueswhich he believes may contribute to a higher risk for developing Alzheimers disease.
Amyloid plaques are groupings of misfolded proteins that form between nerve cells. The abnormal composition of these proteins is thought to play a critical role in the progression of Alzheimers disease. Amyloid plaques become concentrated first in the areas of the brain that manage memory and other cognitive functions and this is often where evidence of Alzheimers disease manifests and can be identified.
It might be prudent that if someone is at risk to develop Alzheimers, they should consider reducing their intake and certainly avoid binge or heavy drinking,
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How Do You Know If Youre Drinking Too Much Alcohol
Your body has the amazing ability to warn you when youre taking on more than it can handle. Think about how much harder it is to concentrate when youve stayed up all night or how bloated and sick you feel after overeating. Along those same lines, if you find yourself dealing with frequent hangovers, your body is shouting to you that you need to scale back on your alcohol consumption.
Alcohol causes your body to shed water and is a known diuretic. The headache that accompanies a hangover is actually a result of brain shrinkage due to dehydration. Sounds a little scary when put into those terms, huh?
An obvious tip here: If you are trying to avoid Alzheimers disease then shrinking your brain is the last thing you want to be doing.
Binge Drinking May Cause Alzheimer’s Diseaseand It Might Strike Younger And In A Severe Form
Binge drinking may be linked to both the onset and severity of Alzheimer’s disease, but scientists have only now embarked on a path to decipher each molecular step involved in how excessive alcohol consumption leads to the most common form of dementia.
The research, underway at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York, builds on a deceptively simple premise: Excessive alcohol consumption is toxic to the brain. Binge drinking likely plays an insidious role in the alteration of a normal brain protein into a biological rogue that is highly prevalent in Alzheimer’s disease. The protein is identified by a simplistic monosyllabic nametau.
In its normal conformation, tau is found in neurons modulating the stability of axonal microtubules. But in its abnormal conformation, tau has long been considered one of the leading hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, and makes up the tangles in the notorious “plaques and tangles” pathology. The plaques are deposits of the protein beta amyloid. The Feinstein Institutes research involving binge drinking and Alzheimer’s dementia is riveted, however, on tau.
A potential breakthrough in the investigation would be a definitive explanation of how tau transforms from a normal protein into a neuron-annihilating cause of Alzheimer’s under the influence of excessive alcohol. The New York researchers think they’re on the right path to make that discovery.
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How To Treat Alcohol Dementia
If a person can stop drinking or improve other lifestyle factors, signs of alcohol-related dementia may remain stable or even improve, according to research published in the journal Age and Ageing. Some interventions include:
- Sobriety. If your loved one is experiencing dementia caused by alcohol, the most helpful form of harm reduction is sobriety.
- Diet. Poor nutrition may make dementia symptoms worse, according to the New York Academy of Sciences. Focus on a dementia diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in refined sugars and sodium. Thiamine and B1 both reduced by excess alcohol consumption should be added to your loved ones diet through foods like pork, fish, beans, and lentils.
- Treatment of comorbidities. Alcohol abuse can increase the risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, according to the American College of Cardiology. These conditions, in turn, increase dementia risks. By addressing possible comorbidities, dementia risks may be reduced.
Symptoms Of Alcohol Dementia
There are several symptoms which can be easily identified and might indicate that one suffers from this health problem. For example, headaches, frequent anger episodes, mood swings, slurred speech as well as memory gaps are serious signs of alcoholic dementia. Having regular alcohol blackout symptoms while drinking is also dangerous to the human brain and acts as a contributing factor to this condition.
Elderly alcoholic dementia is a closely-related condition which affects elderly people, and the health effects of alcohol are worse when coupled with other neurological illnesses such as Alzheimers disease or Parkinsons disease. This combination of brain issues might be incurable and are known as alcohol-induced psychosis.
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Other Studies Show Alcohol Harms The Memory Center Of The Brain
A toast to that news, right? Not so fast. Just a few months prior, a similar 30-year study of 550 people found that even moderate consumption of alcohol resulted in hippocampus atrophy, or degeneration when measured with an MRI. The hippocampus is responsible for memory and atrophy is an early marker of Alzheimers disease. The study gave participants three different memory tests and found that participants with higher consumption did worse on one, but not the other two, leading researchers to conclude that moderate consumption has an effect on the hippocampus and what they call lexical fluency, or comfort accessing a variety of words, which is a skill used to detect early dementia.
Its important to note that both studies were conducted on people living in the same communities so other lifestyle factors may be at play. The study with a positive correlation between drinking and cognitive health focused on a middle to upper middle class suburb of San Diego with almost entirely white population participating, and more women than men. The other study included more men than women.
What Are Signs Of Alcohol Misuse Or Alcohol Use Disorder
Alcohol misuse or alcohol use disorder is a pattern of drinking that can cause harm to a persons health and social relationships. Drinking too much at one time or on any given day or having too many drinks over the course of a week increases the risk of harmful consequences, including injuries and health problems. Men should not have more than two drinks a day and women only one. Drinking less alcohol is better for health than drinking more.
The definition of one drink means:
- One 12-ounce can or bottle of regular beer, ale, or hard seltzer
- One 8- or 9-ounce can or bottle of malt liquor
- One 5-ounce glass of red or white wine
- One 1.5-ounce shot glass of 80-proof distilled spirits like gin, rum, tequila, vodka, or whiskey.
Understanding these standard drink sizes can make it easier to follow health guidelines. Another thing to keep in mind is that drinks may be stronger than you think they are if the actual serving sizes are larger than the standard sizes. In addition, drinks within the same beverage category, such as beer, can contain different percentages of alcohol. Its important to read the label to understand and be aware of how much youre actually drinking.
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Does Alcohol Affect Memory The Facts About Alcohol And Brain
Do you like to drink alcohol occasionally? Youre far from alone. In fact, more than 85% of adults have reported drinking alcohol at some point in their lives.
And 2020 was a big year for alcohol consumption in the U.S., with heavy drinking increasing by 41% among women.
Though having an alcoholic beverage every now and then is usually low-risk, overindulging in drinking can have serious consequences for the brain.
Not to mention, long-term alcohol abuse will cause neurological damage.
Signs And Symptoms Of Alcohol
The broader category of alcohol-related dementia includes Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome as well as a type of dementia characterized by impaired planning, thinking, and judgment.
Symptoms of WKS may present as someone telling the same stories or asking the same questions over and over, with no recollection that the questions have just been asked and answered. In conversation, someone may repeat the same piece of information 20 times, remaining wholly unaware that they are repeating the same thing.
Remarkably, at the same time, they can seem to be in total possession of their faculties, able to reason well, draw correct deductions, make witty remarks, or play games that require mental skills, such as chess or cards.
ARD is a progressive illness, which means its symptoms often happen in stages and continue to get worseespecially if left untreated.
While forgetfulness and short-term memory might be the first signs, a person may go on to experience difficulties with executive functioning and, in a later stage, problems with motor abilities.
The age of onset of alcohol-related dementia varies, but it’s often seen in older adults . However, it can occur earlier depending on the amount of alcohol a person consumes.
For instance, research suggests that a five-year history of drinking 35 alcoholic beverages a week for men and 28 for women presents a “sufficient” risk for the development of ARD.
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Does Alcohol Cause Dementia
Dementia is a general term for a decline in cognitive function. This can involve problems with memory, language, thinking, and judgment. And while alcohol abuse doesnt cause dementia, it can be a contributing factor.
This is because heavy drinking can lead to brain damage that causes dementia-like symptoms. For example, chronic drinking can cause shrinkage of the hippocampus, which can lead to problems with memory and learning.
Its important to note that not all heavy drinkers will develop dementia. But it is a risk factor, especially for those who already have a family history of the condition.
Is There Treatment Available
At an early stage of the disease, problems may be reduced or reversed if the person abstains from alcohol, improves their diet and replace vitamins especially thiamine and vitamin B1. Thiamine is important to limit some of the toxic effects of alcohol, and is an important supplement for heavy drinkers.
Community support is available for the person with dementia, their family and carers. This support can make a positive difference to managing dementia.
Many people who develop alcohol related dementia are young, and this can mean that they and their family and carers will need extra consideration. It may be helpful to talk to a counsellor at Dementia Australia. Contact the National Dementia Helpline on 1800 100 500.
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Current Drinking Guidelines May Not Be Strong Enough
The number of dementia cases worldwide is expected to triple to more than 150 million by 2050. With no cure in sight there is an increasing focus on changing certain lifestyles habits including drinking habits.
Dr. Topiwala points out there are drugs that reduce iron in the brain, known as chelators. They are already being investigated as potential Alzheimers and Parkinsons treatments.
Alcohol-related brain iron may be partially mediated by higher systemic iron levels, but it is likely there are additional mechanisms involved. Poorer executive function and fluid intelligence and slower reaction speeds were seen with markers of higher basal ganglia iron, study authors write. Brain iron accumulation is a possible mechanism for alcohol-related cognitive decline.
Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adult men of legal age consume no more than two drinks in a day. They recommend adult women limit themselves to one drink a day.
South West News Service writer Mark Waghorn contributed to this report.
Moderate Drinking And Ad
A 2020 study showed that moderate alcohol intake could lower a persons risk of developing Alzheimers disease.
The study defined moderate drinking as consuming 113 standard drinks per week, equivalent to 10130 grams per week.
However, drinking guidelines do vary per country. A standard drink contains , or 0.6 ounces , of pure alcohol in the United States.
Generally, this is equivalent to:
- 12 oz of beer with 5% alcohol: approximately one beer
- 5 oz of wine with 12% alcohol: one standard glass of wine
- 8 oz of malt liquor with 7% alcohol: one standard glass of malt liquor
- 1.5 oz of liquor or distilled spirits with 40% alcohol: a standard shot glass of spirit
A found a significant association between reducing a persons alcohol consumption with a lower risk of cognitive impairments and dementia.
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Comparison With Other Studies
We, as with others,7 observed an increased risk of dementia in alcohol abstainers, a finding subject to much debate. As studies usually assess alcohol consumption only once, excess risk might be driven by the inclusion of former drinkers in the same group as abstainers.7 Our analyses using repeat data on alcohol consumption across midlife suggest that former drinking might not explain the excess dementia risk in abstainers, although we cannot exclude the possibility that those who report alcohol abstinence in midlife were heavy drinkers in young adulthood or misreported their alcohol consumption. We accounted for several sociodemographic and health related characteristics in the analysis, but residual confounding cannot be excluded as an explanation for the higher risk of dementia among abstainers. Indeed, this group is particular in that it is composed mainly of women from the lower socioeconomic group with higher prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors and disease at baseline, a pattern that has also been observed in other studies.3537
Getting The Help You Need For Alcohol Misuse Or Alcohol Use Disorder
Some people have no trouble cutting back on their drinking. But others will need to stop drinking completely. Alcohol problems can happen to people from all walks of life at any age, and, each year, millions of people seek help for alcohol problems.
If you or someone you love is thinking of changing their habits around alcohol, the Rethinking Drinking website, hosted by NIHs National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , provides information on signs of a problem and tools that can help lead to better health.
Making a change in your drinking habits can be hard. Dont give up! If you dont reach your goal the first time, try again. The good news is youre not in this alone. Dont be afraid to talk with a doctor and ask your family and friends for help. Here are some approaches to try to get started:
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Reasons For A Healthier Approach To Drinking
There are many potential reasons to cut down on or to stop drinking.
Do any of these reasons sound true for you? A healthier approach to drinking alcohol could help you:
- Keep your high blood sugar under control
- Lower your blood pressure
- Keep your liver working as it should
- Avoid legal trouble or hurting yourself or others by drunk driving
- Lessen the chances you will fall and hurt yourself
- Feel less sleepy or sick the morning after you drink
- Get back to enjoying the things you used to do
- Stop feeling embarrassed about how you act when drinking
- Prevent damage to relationships with friends and loved ones
What Is Alcohol Related Dementia
Alcohol related dementia, as the name suggests, is a form of dementia related to the excessive drinking of alcohol. This affects memory, learning and other mental functions. Korsakoffs syndrome and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome are particular forms of alcohol related brain injury which may be related to alcohol related dementia.
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