Lao Li has a troublesome thing recently, he is a person who is addicted to alcohol, every time there is pressure in life, he has to borrow alcohol to pour worry, and usually likes to hold a wine glass no matter what he does. But just a few days ago, a friend's words made him drink is not not not to drink: Lao Li, don't drink anymore, I heard that many diseases may come to the door over time.
Lao Li was startled after listening to it, and there were many people around him who advised him to quit drinking as soon as possible, but he went in and out of his left ear every time, because he didn't really understand the specific harm of drinking to his body. In fact, more and more studies have shown that drinking alcohol increases the risk of many diseases, such as stroke, liver cirrhosis, etc., let's take a look at the specific diseases in combination with the research published in Nature Medicine.
In addition, we also have to help Lao Li correct a misunderstanding.
First, stressed and want to borrow wine to pour worry? Science Signaling research shows: It may make you "more worried"
New Year visits to relatives, children get married, full moon banquets... We will find that the existence of alcohol is indispensable in many places in life, coupled with China's historical wine culture, it has made a culture of persuasion in society, as if as long as the pressure is high, we can have a drink to relieve it. But is that really the case?
In fact, the poet Li Bai has long told us the answer to the question: "Toast to eliminate sorrow and be more worried", which to some extent has a scientific basis. Researchers at the University of Porto in Portugal published a study in Science Signaling that excessive alcohol intake can trigger abnormal synaptic pruning, resulting in loss and anxiety-like behavior. Simply put, excessive drinking every day may make us more anxious and feel "worried".
The researchers used mice as the research subjects, simulated repeated excessive drinking by humans through an ethanol exposure protocol, and fed male mice 1.5g/kg of ethanol for a period of 10 days. In fact, this amount is not small, similar to the amount of alcohol consumed by adults weighing 75 kg in 5 glasses containing 12g of alcohol. Subsequently, it was seen from this ethanol exposure regimen that alcohol intake brought microglia in the prefrontal cortex to life.
Specifically, alcohol intake activates the enzyme Src and its downstream transcription factor NF-kB, increases the production of tumor necrosis factor and triggers microglial activation. After all, in the above ethanol exposure scheme, the important producer of microglia is tumor necrosis factor, and blocking its production in time has the opportunity to inhibit this activation. But what are microglia? What does it do?
In fact, microglia play an important role in the brain and are the innate immune cell population in it. If an infection occurs in the central nervous system, it causes microglia to be activated to restore tissue homeostasis through transcriptional characteristics, phagocytosis, morphological changes, etc. The problem is that for many neuropsychiatric diseases, once the immune function of microglia is impaired, it may increase phagocytic activity, overproduce inflammatory mediators, and adversely affect synapses.
The study was conducted on the premise of tumor necrosis factor, which produces inflammatory mediators, and the researchers first tested whether ethanol could drive behavioral changes. The results found that in the elevated maze test, the time for mice to stay in the open arm of the maze was reduced, and the fewer times they entered the open arm and the shorter the stay, it often meant that the anxiety of mice would be more serious. That is, ethanol intake increased anxiety-like behavior in mice.
But why do mice behave this way?
The researchers say that behavioral changes such as increased anxiety may be caused by the excit/inhibition balance in the prefrontal cortex circuit, in which microglia play a role, and its increased activation will increase and reduce the number of excitatory synapses in the neocortex. Further studies have found that the loss of excitatory synapses in the prefrontal cortex after ingestion of ethanol is caused by necrosis factor produced by microglia, and this ethanol-related mediation plays an important role in microglial hyperphagocytosis.
All in all, this animal experiment revealed that ethanol intake passes through the microglial tumor necrofactor signaling pathway, resulting in abnormal pruning of excitatory synapses in the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, in mouse experiments alone, ethanol intake does increase anxiety-like behavior, and it is unrealistic for us to achieve the goal of drinking or getting drunk to relieve thousands of worries.
But we should also be aware that this study has limitations. For example, the transcription procedures of microglia in female and male mice are very different, and the former is relatively prone to alcohol-related neuronal damage and inflammation, but the study only reported on male mice, and it is difficult to clarify the specific performance of female mice in experiments. If further research can be carried out on female mice, it is believed that it can help people understand the effect of ethanol exposure on anxiety-related behaviors and other factors, but there is research to support anxiety caused by excessive drinking, and it is best to stay away from alcohol as soon as possible.
Second, put down the wine glass in your hand! Top international medical journals have found that drinking alcohol increases the risk of 61 diseases in Chinese men
The intuitive problem is that about 3 million precious lives are lost every year due to alcohol consumption, and the WHO has published a data estimate that drinking behavior, including alcoholism, will cause the death of 1 in 20 people.
For example, through previous studies, we can understand that heavy drinking can not only lead to stroke, obesity, liver cirrhosis and cardiovascular disease, but also closely related to a variety of cancers and life expectancy.
A study published in The Lancet said that people who usually have a lot of alcoholism or excessive drinking and alcoholism may reduce their average life expectancy by 3 to 6 years. The problem is that although there are many studies on the harm of drinking, there are few studies that comprehensively and systematically assess the relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of different diseases in the same population, and the study we want to say published in top international medical journals focuses on this issue.
The study is a prospective study of chronic diseases in China jointly published in Nature Medicine by researchers from Peking University and Oxford University, who studied adults recruited in 10 different urban and rural areas in China, and the subsequent systematic analysis of the data showed us the adverse health consequences of alcohol consumption. About one-third of these participants were men and 2% of women had regular drinking habits, and more than 510,000 participants were involved in the entire study.
The researchers first comprehensively evaluated the role of drinking in more than 200 different diseases of men based on about a dozen years of hospitalization records and death record system links, and used genetic analysis to figure out whether drinking is a direct cause of the disease. It was found that men who drank regularly had a significantly higher overall risk of various diseases and were hospitalized more often than men who drank alcohol occasionally.
If you look at the different drinking patterns, drinking heavily, drinking every day, or drinking in addition to meals increases the risk of certain diseases such as cirrhosis. We need to understand that more than 200 different diseases covered in this study, including stroke, liver cirrhosis and other diseases that the World Health Organization has clearly linked to alcohol intake, as well as 33 diseases such as cataracts, fractures, and gout that have not been determined by previous studies, found that men's alcohol intake and the risk of developing 61 diseases were positively correlated.
Drinking an average of 4 more drinks per day was associated with a 14% increase in the risk of 28 previously identified diseases and alcohol intake, and a 6% increase in the risk of 33 diseases with an unidentified association. Especially the risk of gout and liver cirrhosis, drinking 4 more drinks a day will double the risk of both diseases.
It's worth mentioning that the study cleverly provided a useful control group: less than 2 percent of women who drank alcohol in China. This setting is helpful in confirming that the excess disease risk in men on genetic analysis is due to alcohol, and that it is clearly a factor of alcohol consumption rather than through other mechanisms associated with the mutation. And in addition to increasing the risk of many diseases, excessive drinking can also adversely affect our brains, making people more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia and other diseases.
This conclusion was made by a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which included more than 3 million participants enrolled in South Korea's national health insurance system, with an average age of 55 and more than half of the participants being male than female.
At the beginning of the study, the researchers collected statistics on participants' blood lipids, blood pressure, alcohol consumption, weight and other lifestyle information, treatment history information, etc., and analyzed the results of removing other influencing factors, and concluded that excessive drinking was associated with an increased risk of dementia.
Specifically, when people who have previously had light drinking habits change to heavy drinking, the risk of dementia increases by 8%, and if those who never drink alcohol are converted to heavy drinkers, the risk of dementia will even increase by 30%! Therefore, from the aspect of maintaining our own health, we should stop drinking as soon as possible in life, it is best to drink alcohol, after all, whether from China or the world, improper use of alcohol is a risk factor for health problems.
Bibliography:
[1] Ling, Chan, Ka Hung.Alcohol consumption and risks of more than 200 diseases in Chinese men.2023.06.08.
[2] Junhee Park, Jung Eun Yoo.Changes in Alcohol Consumption and Risk of Dementia in a Nationwide Cohort in South Korea.2023.02.06.
[3] Camila C. Portugal.Daily alcohol intake triggers aberrant synaptic pruning leading to synapse loss and anxiety-like behavior.2020.09.22.