After drinking a little headache and fatigue, how do you usually solve it? Sleep hard, take some antidotes, or choose to endure in silence... In many people's drunken experience, all kinds of discomfort will dissipate after a sleep, so some people think that it doesn't matter if you get drunk occasionally. Recently, a joint Spanish and German study found that after 6 weeks of drinking, our brains are still continuously damaged.
First, get drunk once, hurt the brain for 6 weeks
A joint team of researchers from the Spanish Neuroscience Institute and the Central Institute for Mental Health in Germany compared the brain magnetic resonance imaging of 90 alcoholics with 36 non-alcoholics and observed the continuous degeneration of white matter in the brains of alcoholics.
Alcoholics have significantly less electrical activity (blue line) in their brains after two weeks of waking (left) than those who abstain (right).
Brain scans showed that alcohol had the greatest effect on two parts of the brain, the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. Memory, emotion, decision-making, and behavior are all controlled by these two parts, so these functions can be impaired.
Compared with people who did not drink alcohol, the electrical activity of neurons in the drinker's brain was still significantly less after two weeks of decanting, and this effect lasted for 6 weeks after stopping drinking.
The findings suggest that alcohol clearly deviates adolescent brains from normal developmental rules. Since the prefrontal region of the brain is the most recent to mature, the prefrontal cortex gray matter effect is the most pronounced.
The frontal cortex is the area of the brain responsible for performing functions, including cognitive processes. Accelerated decline in the prefrontal cortex of the brain leads to accelerated impairment of cognitive function. The damage caused by alcohol to these areas may also affect the child's judgment, decision-making, self-control, etc.
Second, the hippocampus atrophysic
Higher alcohol intake is associated with an increased risk of developing hippocampal atrophy
In a 30-year cohort study published in the British Medical Journal BMJ, 550 adult participants repeatedly measured cognitive performance, weekly alcohol consumption, and underwent multimodal MRI imaging at the end of the study.
Participants who consumed 30 units (about 8 g of alcohol per unit) per week had the highest risk of hippocampal atrophy, 5.8 times that of non-drinkers;
Moderate drinkers (male: 7-21 units/week, female: 7-14 units/week) have a 3.4-fold risk of atrophy of the hippocampus on the right side of the non-drinker;
Mild alcohol consumption (1-7 units/week) also does not prevent atrophy of the hippocampus.
In addition, in terms of cognition, the more people who drink more alcohol, the faster their vocabulary fluency declines. However, there were no statistical differences in semantic fluency and word memory.
Third, the brain is atrophied, and you are not far from dementia
a. All types of dementia b. Early-onset dementia
The lancet public health, a sub-publication of the lancet, published a study of 1 million data that showed that heavy alcohol consumption was the most important risk factor for dementia, especially early-onset dementia.
The research team was ambitious from the start, and they analyzed a huge database of more than 30 million data covering all hospitalizations in France.
They found more than 1 million cases of dementia, excluded patients with rare types of dementia and early mental disorders, and eventually found that 945,000 people had alcohol use disorder. It can be seen that there is a strong correlation between alcohol and dementia.
It is worth mentioning that this association is particularly pronounced in early-onset dementia, where 57% of patients under the age of 65 with a history of alcoholism develop dementia.
Fourth, there may be gender differences, and men are more serious
Previous studies have shown that the long-term effects of alcohol on the brain are mediated by γ-aminobutyric acid and cause alterations in brain potentials caused by transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex.
Based on this theory, a Finnish study used transcranial magnetic stimulation electroencephalogram (tms-eeg) to measure and compare changes in brain potentials in the 27 (11 male) heavy drinking groups and 25 (12 men) without a history of drinking. The results showed that the amplitude of the brain potential change in men was more pronounced than in the control group.
This suggests that men may be more harmful to long-term heavy drinking during puberty than women, and are more likely to experience brain function changes.
Although the telencephalon is made up of about 14 billion cells and the cerebral cortex is about 2-3 mm, about 100,000 brain cells die every day. However, fueled by alcohol, the decline in gray matter accelerates, and brain cells die more.
The Lancet: The safest amount of alcohol to drink is 0
A study of 28 million people worldwide published in The Lancet found that there is no "safety value" in drinking alcohol, and that drinking alcohol has adverse health effects. Therefore, the safest amount of alcohol consumption is 0, and it is recommended to drop alcohol without sticking.
The Lancet published a collaborative research paper by Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the University of Oxford, which found that as alcohol consumption increased, blood pressure levels and the risk of stroke continued to increase.
Overall, harmful use of alcohol causes 3 million deaths worldwide each year, of which men account for three-quarters of them. According to the World Health Organization, the harmful use of alcohol can cause more than 200 diseases.
Sixth, excessive alcohol consumption, the whole body is injured
1. Liver damage
Long-term heavy drinking, the first thing that is harmed is the body's liver. In the process of heavy drinking, liver cells will be destroyed, detoxification function will decrease, the heat generated by alcohol can not be used and turned into fat, a large amount of fat into liver cells, the place of liver cell granules is occupied, the metabolism of substances can not be carried out, a large number of acids accumulate in the liver, forming fatty liver, and even deadly cirrhosis.
2. Cancer
The third edition of the Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Cancer Prevention Global Report, jointly launched by the American Cancer Institute and the World Cancer Research Foundation, states:
There is strong evidence that alcohol consumption is strongly associated with 6 types of cancer, including oropharyngeal, esophageal, gastric, liver, colorectal, and breast cancer. Even small amounts of alcohol or alcoholic beverages can increase the risk of cancer.
3. Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases
Excessive alcohol consumption increases the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases such as hypertension and stroke.
4. Malnutrition
Excessive alcohol consumption can reduce appetite and make it easy to malnutrition. In addition, the damage to the digestive system caused by heavy alcohol consumption will also affect the digestion, absorption and transport of nutrients, exacerbating nutrient deficiencies.
5. Fetal malformations
For special populations, alcohol is more harmful. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy may have adverse consequences for fetal development, and alcohol abuse can lead to fetal malformations.
If you drink alcohol during lactation, alcohol will affect your child's cognitive function through milk, resulting in inattention.
Heavy use of alcohol is a high-risk factor for a variety of cancers, including oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, liver, colorectal, and breast cancers. The risk of cancer increases with alcohol intake. If people drink heavily while smoking heavily, their risk of developing multiple cancers increases dramatically.
So, what kind of alcohol consumption is most beneficial for health? The answer is: quit!
Source: Direct Reading
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