"... one thing people who drink
socially probably don't need to worry about is sacrificing brain cells in the
process. The research indicates that adults who drink in moderation are not in
danger of losing brain cells."(The New York Times)
"Even in alcoholics, alcohol use
doesn't actually result in the death of brain cells."(Discovery
Health)
One very popular myth
concerning alcohol that was once spread about, particularly during Prohibition,
is that drinking excessive amounts of alcohol can lead to spontaneous combustion
due to alcohol being flammable and it coursing through your veins. This is
ridiculous on many levels, but nevertheless, was a popular notion during
Prohibition and for a while afterwards.
This combustion
argument against drinking was dropped long ago but many anti-alcohol writers
continue to promote the idea that even moderate drinking causes brain cells to
die. This myth also has been widely popularized during Prohibition, but is
pretty much alive among the general public.
Scientific medical
research however has actually demonstrated an opposite - that the moderate
consumption of alcohol is associated with better cognitive (thinking and
reasoning) skills and memory than is abstaining from alcohol. Moderate drinking
doesn’t kill brain cells but helps the brain function better into old age.
Studies around the world involving many thousands of people report this
finding.
Of course, years of
alcohol abuse can cause serious neurological damage, including Wernicke-Korsakoff
syndrome. Harm can be done to message-carrying dendrites on neurons in the
cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in learning and physical coordination.
But even in such extreme cases, there’s a lack of evidence that alcohol kills
brain cells.
However, abstinence
after chronic alcohol abuse enables brains to repair themselves, according to
new research involving rats. During simulated alcohol “binges,” rats’ ability
to create new brain cells was reduced. But after the animals no longer consumed
alcohol they had a “huge burst” in new brain cell development.
But when you are
drunk, your brain is truly affected. The study, done at the Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis, explained the biology of how the
brain deals with alcohol. In particular, the research looks at how the brain
reacts when a person is so intoxicated that they cannot recall events during
the period commonly referred to as “blackout.”
Large quantities of
alcohol interfere with key receptors in the hippocampus, the main center for
cognitive functioning in the brain. At the same time, alcohol releases a
steroid that that inhibits the way by which the brain strengthens synapses — or
the connections between brain cells.
Researchers now
believe that large amounts of alcohol won’t kill brain cells, but rather it signals
compounds that inhibit the brain’s ability to form memories. This “may explain
why individuals who get highly intoxicated don’t remember what they did the
night before,” senior investigator Charles F. Zorumski, MD, the Samuel B. Guze
Professor and head of the Department of Psychiatry said in a press release from
Washington University.
Another very recent study confirmed once again the fact that
drinking alcohol may significantly enhance a person’s problem solving skills.
Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer
or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions
right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men
who answered the questions sober.
Scientists found that participants with a BAC of 0.07 or higher solved 40 percent more problems than their sober counterparts and took 12 seconds to complete the tasks compared to 15.5 seconds by teetotal participants.
While the latest findings go against the traditional beliefs
that alcohol impairs analytical thinking and rational thoughts, lead author
Professor Jennifer Wiley of the University of Illinois at Chicago discovered
that alcohol may enhance creativity problem solving by reducing the mind’s
working memory capacity, which is the ability to concentrate on something in
particular.
“Working memory capacity is considered the ability to
control one’s attention,” Wiley told the Federation of Associations in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS). “It’s the ability to remember one thing
while you’re thinking about something else.”
While the latest study found that alcohol may enhance
creative problem solving, previous research found that increased working memory
capacity actually led to better analytical problem-solving performance.
Researcher also found that people who drank alcohol and had
a blood alcohol level of 0.07 or higher were worse at completing problems that
required attentional control but better at creative problem solving
tests.
Wiley said that the key finding was that being too focused
can blind a person to novel possibilities and a broader, more flexible state of
attention may be helpful for creative solutions to emerge.
“We have this assumption, that being able to focus on one
part of a problem or having a lot of expertise is better for problem solving,”
Wiley said. “But that’s not necessarily true. Innovation may happen when people
are not so focused. Sometimes it’s good to be distracted.”
Wiley noted that the findings only apply to people who had
only a few drinks and not when people drink to extremes.
Furthermore, several researches have proved that moderate
alcohol consumption helps protect people from cognitive impairment as they age.
According to a study done at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, in
Italy, 29% of people 65 years or older who almost never drank alcohol
throughout their life had mental impairment issues. On the flip-side of that,
only about 19% of people 65 years or older who drank moderate amounts of
alcohol regularly had any mental impairment. It was further discovered that,
among the various groups where other problems, such as health problems or the
like, might impair them mentally, the same trend appeared. In every group,
those who drank moderately on a regular basis throughout their lives always had
a diminished chance of becoming mentally impaired in their old age compared to
those who didn’t drink at all or almost never drank.
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