The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published that drinking alcohol can increase an individual’s risk of cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease. In addition to this, alcohol can affect the brain, an area where research is currently ongoing. Many studies are exploring how alcohol can induce different effects on the brain, including impairments in memory, decision-making, and emotion. Understanding these effects of alcohol is crucial as long term consumption can lead to structural changes in the brain.
One study investigated how excessive alcohol consumption can cause dementia related neuropathologies. Researchers examined the brains of 1,781 deceased individuals in the study. The Sao Paulo Autopsy Service (SPAS) provided the brains for this study, with the average age of the brains being around seventy five years old. Participants were divided into four categories: those that have never drank, moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers, and formerly heavy drinkers. Out of all the participants, 965 of them had never drank.
The results of the study found that there were worse outcomes for those that had drunk alcohol. The results found that moderate and heavy drinkers were at risk for hyaline arteriolosclerosis, a thickening and narrowing of the blood vessels. Heavy drinkers were also at risk for neurofibrillary tangles, which are related to Alzheimer’s. Additionally, former heavy drinkers and heavy drinkers had a lower brain mass ratio and poor cognitive abilities compared to those that had never drank.
However, this study does have its limitations. Most of the information about the drinking habits of the participants came from family members, which is not a completely reliable source as personal biases are often involved. On top of that, the data of how long participants were drinking alcohol was also not available to the researchers. Finally, researchers did not consider the vitamin deficiencies of each individual, which may have had an impact on the cognitive abilities of the participants. While there are limitations of this study, the results that it presents are in accordance with a similar trend of previous studies that demonstrate that heavy drinkers die multiple years sooner than non-drinkers.
The findings from this study indicate that there are many potential dangers that heavy alcohol consumption can pose to the brain of an individual. These findings could be extremely important to studies in the future that desire to research a similar topic. More research is needed in this area, but early results indicate that there could be many damaging effects of alcohol on the brain.
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