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Heavy Social Drinkers
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Brain Damage, Study Finds
Heavy social drinkers show a pattern
of brain damage similar to that seen in hospitalized alcoholics
-- enough to impair day-to-day functioning, U.S. researchers said.
Brain scans show clear evidence
of damage, and tests of reading, balance and other functions show
people who drink more than 100 drinks a month have problems, the
researchers said.
"Oftentimes alcoholics are the
last ones to know they have a problem," said Dr. Peter Martin
of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who wrote a commentary
on the report.
"I think this is the first study
of its kind that has looked at brain functioning in individuals
who are heavy social drinkers who have not gone to get treatment
for their alcoholism," added Martin, a professor of psychiatry
who specializes in addiction.
Dieter Meyerhoff of the University
of California San Francisco and colleagues examined 46 chronic,
heavy drinkers and 52 light drinkers recruited using newspaper
ads and flyers.
They used magnetic resonance imaging
to look at physical brain structures and measured various brain
chemicals associated with healthy brain function.
"The enrollment criterion for heavy
drinkers was the consumption of more than an average of 100 alcoholic
drinks per month for men over 3 years before the study (80 drinks
for women)," the researchers wrote in their report, published
in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
One drink is usually defined as
a serving of spirits, a glass of wine or a can or bottle of beer.
Standard tests of verbal intelligence,
processing speed, balance, working memory, spatial function, executive
function, and learning and memory were given to the volunteers.
"Our heavy drinkers sample was
significantly impaired on measures of working memory, processing
speed, attention, executive function, and balance," the researchers
wrote.
Measures of brain chemicals and
structures showed some of the same damage seen in alcoholics who
were in the hospital or treatment centers, although with a slightly
different pattern in the brain, they said.
The study is unusual in that most
studies of brain damage from alcohol are done in people who have
undergone treatment.
"What our findings indicate is
that brain damage is detectable in heavy drinkers who are not
in treatment and function relatively well in the community," Meyerhoff
said in a statement.
Martin noted the volunteers in
the study had gone without a drink for 12 hours and could thus
be showing evidence of alcohol withdrawal rather than actual permanent
brain damage.
"The problem of studying people
who are out there drinking is you are never sure whether these
are enduring effects or acute effects," Martin said in a telephone
interview.
"Would these people, if they dried
for a period of three or four weeks, would they have these abnormalities?"
Martin said it was most likely
the damage was real and long lasting. "My personal experience
is that there is an awful lot of evidence ... showing that the
more people drink and the longer they drink, the more likely they
are to have cognitive impairments."
Meyerhoff said moderate alcohol
use for most adults translated to up to two drinks a day for younger
men and one drink a day for women and older people.
"Our message is: Drink in moderation.
Heavy drinking damages your brain ever so slightly, reducing your
cognitive functioning in ways that may not be readily noticeable.
To be safe, don't overdo it," Meyerhoff said.
Reference
Source 89
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