happy New Year. The anxious year of 2021 is over. The ancients once sighed, a spring sorrow waiting for wine to pour. On Day 1 of 2022, did you drink? Who do you want to drink with? How much to drink? Drinking alcohol, ethanol and its metabolites, will have a negative impact on health, this truth, everyone understands. The question ensues, buddies and sisters fight for wine, who is more likely to be hurt? Is the health harm caused by drinking alcohol to men and women the same? We are now combining the latest research findings to provide you with a new perspective on the harm of alcohol.
There are gender differences in drinking, both in behavior and in the effects of drinking. Recently, a team at Cornell University, after a long period of research, finally found that the sex difference in drinking behavior is determined by specific circuits in the brain. The paper for the study was published in the October 2021 newsletter volume of the Nature series. Studies have shown that striatine neurons that synthesize adrenocorticotropic hormone-releasing factor are key factors in driving binge drinking patterns and can also lead to anxiety disorders.
The research team found that BNST, the striatal bed nucleus region in the brain, is a major node in the brain's stress response network and is associated with alcoholism. In animal experiments, BNST was found in mice to make females more excited than males, and female mice were more susceptible to alcoholism. The study also found that neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus, which are brakes that inhibit BNST, are able to pass through the brain circuits of female mice and inhibit excessive drinking behavior. If the brakes fail, they are susceptible to the negative effects of drinking alcohol, especially anxiety disorders.
The gender difference in drinking behavior has attracted the attention of many scholars. In 2013, scholars at the University of Vermont published a paper in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. By recruiting 246 subjects for observation, the study found that people who drank excessively, on the second day of drinking, felt more pronounced feelings of anger and sadness, and that the phenomenon was more prominent among women. Therefore, borrowing wine to pour out more sorrowful emotions is more common among women.
The researchers also found that men are generally more likely to drink alcohol when they are angry, so men are more likely to choose to drink to vent their emotions, such people, after abstinence treatment, are more likely to re-emerge from the old state and quickly fall into alcoholism, while women are more likely to feel depressed after getting drunk. Overall, excessive drinking, the inability to control the desire to drink, is not Dionysus possession, but a malfunction of brain circuitry.
Drinking alcohol not only affects your own health, for example, leading to liver damage and increasing the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, but also affects the health of the next generation. In November 2017, a scholar at the University of Queensland published a paper in the American Journal of Physiology. Studies have found that if women drink alcohol before and after conception, their offspring are at higher risk of obesity, and male offspring are more significantly affected by favoring foods with higher fat content, indicating that the reward circuitry in their brains is altered by the influence of alcohol during conception.
In 2019, the research team of the Xiangya School of Public Health of Central South University conducted a meta-analysis of drinking behavior during pregnancy. Studies have shown that when a mother drinks alcohol before and during pregnancy, the child's risk of developing congenital heart disease increases, and the parent's drinking during this period poses a greater risk to the child. Moreover, these effects become more pronounced as alcohol consumption increases. Therefore, those brothers and sisters who have not yet completed their fertility plans should avoid drinking alcohol, so as not to spoil their livers and brains, and also to drink badly their children's small hearts. About 2.4 billion people worldwide currently have drinking habits, of which men are significantly more than women. In 2016, nearly 4 percent of women aged 15 to 49 died from drinking alcohol, while men in the same age group died from drinking more than 12 percent. Drinking alcohol is a major risk factor for early death in most adults, especially men. For the sake of health, in the new year, drink less bar.
Whoever loves, pass on health to whom.
Your health, my concern. Professionals observe health from a scientific and humanistic perspective, including a series of express reports, details, reminders, doubts, observations, opinions, historical stories, etc., with the content of the original works of the author Wei Hongling and the team. All forms of misappropriation and reproduction without permission will be refused, otherwise they will be prosecuted in accordance with relevant laws.