MRI scans of 36,000 people found: "Drinking too much" causes the brain to age by 10 years! Are genetic defects more dangerous?
MRI scans of 30,000 people reveal that drinking alcohol causes brain aging by three and a half years
Drinking can not only relax your mood, but it has also been said in the past that moderate drinking can protect your cardiovascular system. However, more and more scientific evidence shows that drinking alcohol can do “more harm than good” to your health. The University of Pennsylvania also recently published a new paper pointing out that even drinking just 1-2 glasses of wine a day may cause the brain to deteriorate more than people of the same age.
A research team from the University of Pennsylvania used the British Biodatabase to analyze the brain MRI data of 36,678 adults and found that among 50-year-olds, if the amount of alcohol consumed increases from one unit of alcohol per day (of course half a glass of beer) to two per unit (about a glass of wine), the brain’s white and gray matter generation is equivalent to two years of aging. People who consumed 2-3 units of alcohol experienced brain aging of up to 3 and a half years.
Henry Kranzler, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Addiction Research at the University of Pennsylvania, said that various scientific evidences have found that the impact of drinking alcohol on physical health contradicts the safe drinking levels promoted by governments around the world. For example, the recommended alcohol intake for men in the United States and most other countries is twice that for women. However, according to new research results, men drinking 2 units of alcohol a day is enough to affect brain health.
Ten years older than not drinking at all. The more you drink, the worse it will be to your brain.
The research team pointed out that if you have no drinking habit, increasing from zero unit of alcohol to 1 unit of alcohol will not have much impact on brain volume. However, if you increase from 1-2 units to 2-3 units of alcohol every day, it will cause a decrease in white and gray matter in the brain. Research claims that alcohol’s damage to brain health may not be a linear pattern, but an ascending curve in which “the more you drink, the worse it gets.”
In order to ensure that the data is not distorted, this study has excluded subjects with alcohol addiction. Even so, a trend of alcohol’s damage to the brain is still seen in the remaining subjects. In the same age group, the difference in brain aging between those who consumed no alcohol at all and those who consumed an average of one unit of alcohol per day was about half a year. However, the brain aging of those who consumed four units of alcohol per day was more than 10 years older than that of those who did not drink at all.
“Although the research results can only show the correlation between the two, it is more important to remind people who are drinking to pay more attention to their drinking!” One of the study authors, Assistant to the Neuroscience Program at the University of Pennsylvania Professor Gideon Nave said that the impact of alcohol on the brain may increase “exponentially”. Therefore, as long as you drink one less drink a day, you have the opportunity to reduce the premature aging of the brain caused by alcohol. Especially those groups who consume the highest average alcohol intake.
Gene defects affecting dopamine and lipids make drinking alcohol more likely to cause cancer
Why does alcohol affect the brain and cause people to behave abnormally? In recent years, many studies believe that the ethanol in alcohol can cause excessive secretion or abnormal secretion of neurotransmitter substances. For example, a 2010 study found that a large amount of acute drinking will activate the dopamine reward pathway of the brain. On the contrary, once you stop drinking, This can lead to a state of irritability and low dopamine.
In addition, lipids are responsible for regulating various ion channels in the body, and heavy drinking may change the interaction between lipids and proteins in cells.
The American Cancer Society reminds that the human body produces acetaldehyde after metabolizing alcohol. Excessive acetaldehyde can damage DNA and proteins, and also produce harmful substances such as reactive oxygen species. In particular, alcoholics (drinking more than 5 units of alcohol per day) are more likely to increase the risk of cancer due to drinking, including head and neck cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer. In addition, East Asian ethnic groups (including Taiwan) have a higher proportion of genetic defects that lack ALDH2 (aldehyde dehydrogenase). These people have a higher risk of esophageal cancer and head and neck cancer due to heavy drinking.
source:
Associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes in the UK Biobank
Alcohol’s Effects on Brain and Behavior
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