Alcohol Consumption With Dementia
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with dementia, it is important to speak honestly with your doctor about alcohol use, and they can discuss whether it is safe to consume alcohol. Only your physician can provide accurate and specific advice on this. However, since the consumption of alcohol can worsen and accelerate dementia symptoms, your doctor may advise you to cut back or abstain from alcohol entirely, especially for people who drink heavily or have been long-term drinkers.5 Although most forms of dementia are irreversible and chronic, symptoms of alcohol-related dementia can be halted or reversed if drinking is stopped and you follow a healthy diet with vitamin supplementation.8
Clinical Awareness Of Connection Between Alcohol And Dementia Is Paramount To Providing The Best Patient Care Management
Patients who start abusing alcohol later in lifeafter age 40may be doing so secondary to an underlying neurologic condition, such as frontotemporal dementia, according to findings by a team of researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the University of California, San Francisco. The results are reported in the April 4 issue of the Journal of Alzheimers Disease.
Overall alcohol abuseclassified as when alcohol consumption negatively impacts work or social life or leads to legal ramificationsis present in 1.7 percent of older adults in the United States. Previous research has identified lifelong alcohol abuse as a risk factor for dementia. However, it has been unknown whether older adults who begin abusing acohol late in life have an underlying neurodegenerative disease. Particularly concerning is that people who begin abusing alcohol because of an underlying neurological condition may be misdiagnosed with primary alcohol abuse and referred to traditional addiction treatment programs, a process that may delay correct diagnosis and appropriate behavioral treatment, expend family resources, and add to patient and caregiver burden.
Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health, The National Institute on Aging, and the Larry L. Hillblom Network Grant for the Prevention of Age-Associated Cognitive Declince.
About the Journal of Alzheimers Disease
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What Are Common Alcohol
Many early signs of alcoholic dementia overlap with symptoms of other types of dementia. While behavioral signs are similar, many people with alcohol dementia dont end up developing symptoms of late-stage dementia, such as loss of language, inability to eat independently, or loss of key motor skills.
Symptoms to look out for include:
- Memory concerns
- Repeated questions, stories, or phrases
- Lies or fabricated stories
Since people can develop alcohol dementia before they reach old age, its important to monitor your loved one for these symptoms if they have a long history of heavy drinking.
Many of these symptoms may coincide with signs of inebriation for example, your loved one may often repeat phrases or have balance problems after drinking heavily, according to the Banyan Treatment Center.
For this reason, its vital that your relative attend doctors appointments or dementia tests without drinking beforehand. Some programs and medical institutions require a period of sobriety before providing an official alcohol-related dementia diagnosis.
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What Is Alcoholic Dementia
Alcoholic dementia involves memory loss and a variety of other cognitive impairments.
Both short- and long-term memory is affected by alcoholic dementia. This means its challenging to learn new information and remember things already learned.
Along with memory issues, there are a host of other cognitive issues.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the official handbook used by the American Psychiatric Association.
According to the DSM-V, a person with alcoholic dementia may exhibit memory impairment and one or more of these cognitive impairments1:
- Aphasia Loss of ability to use or understand spoken or written language
- Inability to perform specific physical actions despite will and knowledge to do so and relevant muscles being intact
- Agnosia Failure to recognize individuals, objects, or sounds, despite senses being functional
- Executive Functioning Deficits Impaired ability to plan, organize, or think abstractly
Aphasia seems to be less common with alcoholic dementia compared to other dementias.9
Excessive Alcohol Use Linked To Early
Research involved more than 1 million adult patients released from hospitals in France
Alcohol abuse was also associated with vascular risk factors, including high blood pressure
Excessive alcohol use could increase your risk for all types of dementia, particularly early-onset dementia, according to a new study.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Lancet Public Health, looked at over 1 million adults released from French hospitals between 2008 and 2013 who were diagnosed with dementia, a clinical syndrome characterized by a progressive deterioration in cognitive ability.
Using data from the French National Hospital Discharge database, the researchers found that alcohol-use disorders were diagnosed in 16.5% of the men with dementia and 4% of the women with dementia over twice as much as in those without dementia for both sexes.
Alcohol-use disorders refer to the chronic harmful use of alcohol or alcohol dependence, the researchers wrote.
In order to isolate the role of alcohol use, patients with neurological disorders such as Parkinsons and Huntingtons, which can also lead to dementia, were excluded from the study.
The most novel result is the large contribution of alcohol-use disorders to the burden of dementia over the lifespan, said Dr. Michael Schwarzinger, a researcher at the Transitional Health Economics Network in Paris and a leading author of the study.
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What Should I Take Away From This Research
The link between alcohol and dementia in non-drinkers however is not fully understood and individuals who do not currently drink alcohol should not start as a method of protection against the development of dementia.
From the evidence collected to date, it is not possible to determine what effect drinking within the NHS recommended alcohol guidelines has on a person’s risk of dementia.
Guidelines recommend that alcohol consumption be reduced as much as possible, particularly in mid-life, to minimize the risk of developing other age-related conditions such as frailty. Current evidence indicates that adopting a healthy lifestyle throughout your life is the best way to reduce risk of dementia and other long-term health problems. This includes drinking in moderation but also other factors such as not smoking, taking plenty of physical exercise and eating a healthy, balanced diet.
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CategoriesCategories.
Inclusion And Exclusion Criteria
Reviews or meta-analyses were included if they described the systematic search process with listed databases and search terms. Narrative reviews without an explicit search strategy were excluded. In addition, included studies were restricted to systematic reviews that assessed the relationship between alcohol use and cognitive health, dementia, AD, vascular and other dementias, brain function, or memory. Systematic reviews on the association between alcohol use and brain structures were also included. Studies were included if they were published in 2000 or later in order to include only reviews which were undertaken using methodological standards similar to those used today however, this does not mean that the original studies underlying these reviews were restricted to 2000 or later .
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What Is The Cause
It is currently unclear as to whether alcohol has a direct toxic effect on the brain cells, or whether the damage is due to lack of thiamine, vitamin B1.Nutritional problems, which often accompany consistent or episodic heavy use of alcohol, are thought to be contributing factors. Key parts of the brain may suffer damage through vitamin deficiencies, particularly marked levels of thiamine deficiency and the direct effect that alcohol has on the absorption and use of thiamine.
Strengths And Limitations Of This Study
The present study has several strengths. Repeat assessment of alcohol consumption allowed us to assess mean midlife alcohol consumption in order to minimise biases due to measurement error, examine associations with dementia of trajectories of alcohol consumption between midlife and early old age, and examine whether age modifies associations between alcohol consumption and dementia. These features, along with a mean follow-up period of 23 years, allowed a comprehensive assessment of the association of alcohol consumption with dementia. Besides measurement error, studies that recruit participants at older ages are not able to assess the excess risk in those who change their alcohol consumption with age. We were also able to examine the shape of the association between alcohol consumption > 14 units/week and dementia, which was similar to that reported in a recent meta-analysis.7 Dose-response assessment by meta-analysis can be problematic for heavy alcohol consumption as the estimate is constrained to the mean or median consumption in the high alcohol consumption category.7 Finally, we used multistate models to examine the role of cardiometabolic disease and we undertook further analyses to take the competing risk of mortality into account where results were similar to those obtained using Cox regression, increasing confidence in our main findings.
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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.
Does Alcoholism Cause Dementia
Alcohol is a substance that has negatively altered the lives of millions of Americans, including those in Oregon.
According to the Oregon Health Authority, In 2017, 1,923 Oregonians died from alcoholrelated causes, including chronic diseases, acute poisoning, injury, and perinatal causes. This represents a 34% increase in the overall rate of alcoholrelated deaths since 2001.
These numbers show that the beautiful state of Oregon continues to have an unattractive trait that has seemingly worsened since the turn of the century.
The negative health effects of alcohol use disorder, more commonly known as alcoholism, are well-known. However, many have raised one specific question over the years: Does alcoholism cause dementia?
The National Institutes of Health says, Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning thinking, remembering, and reasoning to such an extent that it interferes with a persons daily life and activities. Some people with dementia cannot control their emotions, and their personalities may change. Dementia ranges in severity from the mildest stage, when it is just beginning to affect a persons functioning, to the most severe stage, when the person must depend completely on others for basic activities of living.
So, does alcohol use disorder really contribute to or cause this health condition? Lets take a look.
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Excessive Amounts Of Alcohol
Multiple research and observational studies have demonstrated that people who drink high amounts of alcohol are at an increased risk of developing dementia. Alcohol-related brain damage may account for approximately 10% of all dementia cases.
Imaging tests of the brains of high alcohol drinkers demonstrate atrophy , loss of white matter, decreased neurons and other changes similar to the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Cognitive impairments among excessive alcohol drinkers include:
These cognitive impairments may develop over time, but alcohol can also cause immediate memory loss, known as blackouts.
According to one study conducted on the risk factors for younger-onset dementia, alcohol intoxication as a late teenager is one of the highest predictors of men who will develop it. Additionally, a second study found that 57% of young-onset dementia was related to chronic heavy alcohol use.
The Dangers Of Alcohol
As pleasant as it is to hear that sharing a drink with a friend can decrease your chances of developing Alzheimers disease, we need to acknowledge the significant dangers of regularly over-consuming alcohol. Over-consumption is defined as consuming 4 drinks for men and 3 drinks for women in a single day.
A recent study examined more than thirty-million Europeans to identify the largest factors determining whether an individual develops Alzheimers or dementia. The study found that alcohol was the largest non-genetic risk factor for dementia and Alzheimers disease.
The researchers were shocked at how significantly alcohol contributed. We hypothesized that alcohol would play some role, but I dont think anyone expected the size of the effect to be so large, said lead author Dr. Jürgen Rehm.
The study found that individuals who regularly over-consumed were three times more likely to develop a dementia as those who did not. Over-consumption of alcohol was especially common in study participants diagnosed with early-onset dementia or Alzheimers disease. Early-onset is defined as being diagnosed before the age of 65.
While frequently drinking to excess has been known to have a wide range of negative, this new research shows that the damage caused by alcohol is much more common and much more severe than previously imagined.
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The Seven Stages Of Dementia
Dementia is a general term for cognitive impairment characterized by the reduced ability to remember, think, or make decisions on a daily basis. While dementia itself isnt a specific disease, common conditions like Alzheimers Disease and Parkinsons Disease fall under the same category.
Dementia is progressive, meaning its symptoms worsen with time. This psychological disorder can be broken up into seven stages that showcase the cognitive decline caused by dementia as time progress
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Very Severe Cognitive Decline
The last and final stage of dementia is devastating for loved ones to witness. The seventh stage causes patients to become completely dependent on others to carry out basic activities like walking, eating, drinking, and even sitting. Their speech is also dramatically affected, as the patient can struggle with their words.
Moderately Severe Cognitive Decline
Stage five of dementia can be characterized by your loved one forgetting details about their personal life such as their address, phone number, or even where they went to school. In addition, stage five dementia patients may forget how to bathe or choose and wear clothes.
The next stage of dementia causes more severe side effects
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Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander People
Existing health inequalities put Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at increased risk of dementia, with higher rates of chronic diseases, and alcohol and tobacco use in Indigenous communities.7
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are three to five times more likely to develop dementia than non-Indigenous Australians, and this is likely under-reported.8
Dementia is viewed differently in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Its not always seen as a medical condition. It can go undiagnosed and overlooked due to the many other chronic health issues Indigenous people face.9
The lack of culturally sensitive screening tools and delays in diagnosis mean Indigenous people with dementia and their families face barriers to accessing medical treatment, information and support.9
Leave Alcohol Behind Forever
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We believe that everyone has what it takes to get sober if theyre ready. If you no longer want to live a life consumed by alcohol use but youre struggling to leave it behind were here for you. Even if youve tried to get sober before and failed, keep pushing forward. Your next attempt could be successful.
You deserve to live a life of fulfillment and happiness, free from alcohol. You have what it takes to leave alcohol behind forever.
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How Can Alcohol Damage The Brain
Heavy alcohol consumption over a long period of time can lead to brain damage. People who drink heavily over a long period of time are more likely to have a reduced volume of the brain’s white matter, which helps to transmit signals between different brain regions. This can lead to issues with the way the brain functions.
Long-term heavy alcohol consumption can also result in a lack of vitamin thiamine B1 and Korsakoff’s Syndrome, a memory disorder affecting short term memory.
What is alcohol-related brain damage?What is alcohol-related brain damage? .
Alcohol-related brain damage is a brain disorder. which covers several different conditions including Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and alcoholic dementia, caused by regularly drinking too much alcohol over several years.
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Should Someone With Alzheimers Or Dementia Drink Alcohol
While there is still some debate on whether alcohol can cause Alzheimers disease, there is a clear consensus that those who already have Alzheimers disease or dementia should not drink alcohol. Alcohol causes cognitive impairment that can greatly increase the risk of injury with these conditions. Someone who is drinking may also forget how much alcohol they have consumed, increasing the risk of alcohol poisoning. Alcohol could also speed disease progression.
Is There A Treatment Or Cure
While theres no cure, and most forms of dementia are irreversible,2 alcohol-related dementia is an exception.1
If the disease is diagnosed early enough, symptoms may be improved or reversed if the person stops drinking alcohol and starts replacing thiamine in the body.1
To reduce the risk of all health problems related to alcohol, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia recommends adults drink no more than 10 standard drinks per week.10
If youre worried about a friend or family member who is experiencing memory problems, confusion and/or personality changes, take them to see their doctor or a medical professional.
Early dementia diagnosis can help the person and their family understand, manage and treat the condition.
For more information on dementia and alcohol-related dementia, visit Dementia Australia.
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