Alcohol consumption is one of the leading causes of death, disability and disease burden worldwide. Long-term excessive alcohol consumption can cause liver damage, gout, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease risk increase, it is also not to be underestimated damage to the nervous system, specific manifestations: memory loss, reduced ability to perform control, decision-making disorders, cognitive impairment and so on.
"Excessive drinking is harmful to health" has become a consensus, but most people's views on moderate drinking are still in an ambiguous state, some countries, such as China and the United States Dietary Guidelines recommend avoiding alcohol, even if drinking alcohol should be guaranteed in moderation, but in some Mediterranean countries, considering the protective effect of red wine on cardiovascular diseases, put forward the view that moderate drinking is beneficial to health.
Recently, a recent large population survey from the University of Pennsylvania showed that even moderate alcohol consumption can make our brains smaller, and the more alcohol we drink, the more obvious the degree of brain volume change. The study was published March 4 in Nature Communications.
The study included a sample of 36,678 healthy people aged 40-69 years, recorded the amount of alcohol these participants drank, and collected mrivisiography of the brains of these participants to calculate gray matter and white matter volumes in different areas of the brain.
Controlling for a variety of variables, including participants' age, height, dominant hands, sex, smoking status, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and place of residence, the researchers found that:
0-1 alcohol units per day did not have much effect on brain volume; however, the intake of 1-2 alcohol units per day reduced the volume of gray matter and white matter by 0.127 and 0.074 standard deviations, respectively; while the intake of 2-3 alcohol units per day reduced the volume of gray matter and white matter by 0.223 and 1.28 standard deviations, respectively (compared with 1-2 alcohol units, the degree of reduction increased by 75%).
Note: 1 alcohol unit = 8g ethanol, equivalent to 312.5 ml of beer with an alcohol content of 3.2%, the alcohol content ≠ wort content, and the alcohol content of the more common beer on the market is 3.2%.
This also means that there is not a linear relationship between the amount of alcohol consumed and the decrease in brain volume, but in an exponential relationship, and the more you drink, the greater the impact on the brain, even after removing the highest number of people in the population, the conclusion is still valid.
Moreover, the brain volume reduction caused by drinking alcohol is not limited to one area of the brain, but affects multiple brain regions extensively, including the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, insular lobe, temporal lobe, and cingulate gingulate area.
Figure note: The relationship between daily alcohol consumption and standard gray matter volume and standard white matter volume
Under normal circumstances, brain volume decreases with age, and some patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, have more severe brain atrophy, and diffuse brain atrophy is also associated with memory impairment, cognitive impairment, mental decline, and personality changes.
If the brain volume reduction caused by alcohol consumption is compared with the brain atrophy caused by aging, compared with people who do not drink alcohol, the brain aging is 0.5 years earlier than the daily intake of 1 unit of alcohol, while the daily intake of 4 units of alcohol is a full 10 years earlier.
The age of premature aging of the brain is also exponentially related to the amount of daily alcohol consumed, that is, the effect of the last drink may be greater than any previous drink, so drinking one less drink makes more sense for those who drink the most.
From this study, it can be concluded that 8 grams of alcohol per day is enough to change our brains, and a can of 330 ml of beer can easily reach this tipping point, if the average daily intake of mainland drinkers is 30 grams (3.75 alcohol units) for men and 12.3 grams (1.5375 alcohol units) for women, it can be said that to get a person with drinking habits to control daily alcohol intake below 8 grams, the difficulty is similar to not drinking.
Therefore, for alcohol, there is never a saying of moderation, and for the sake of health, the best thing to do is to drop the wine without sticking.
Resources
[1] Daviet R, Aydogan G, Jagannathan K, Spilka N, Koellinger PD, Kranzler HR, Nave G, Wetherill RR. Associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes in the UK Biobank. Nat Commun. 2022 Mar 4;13(1):1175. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28735-5. PMID: 35246521.
[2] Scientific Research Report on Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2021)
Source | Metz Medicine
Written by | Four five seven
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