Alcohol Abuse Reduces Brain Volume, But Not The Brain’s Function |
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Alcoholism can severely damage your body and its functions, the most common and destructive effect being liver failure and even liver cancer. Moderate intake of alcoholic beverages such as red wine, however, has medically been proven to reduce the risk of heart attacks. As with many products, hobbies and vices, moderation seems to be the key to a healthy and happy life.
Unfortunately, alcohol addicts do not respect the theory of moderations and tend to overindulge as often as possible. Except for the known damages, recent studies have shown that frequently abusing alcohol in large doses (commonly known as “binge-drinking”) can cause extensive harm to one’s body. To be more exact, the brain has to suffer from alcohol abuse.
According to articles from the Archives of Neurology, those who consume alcohol have a volume-wise smaller brain. Although it is a known fact in the medical world that every decade our brain volume reduces in size by 2% every decade, scientists have so far believed that alcohol intake protects against the brain’s volume constant diminishing.
In fact, it has been shown that any amount of consumed alcohol contributes to the brain’s volume reduction. Those who have abstained from alcohol their whole lives have a bigger brain volume than those who have touched a drink once in their lifetime or are often consuming alcohol. In men, the heavy drinkers had significantly less volume than the abstainers and the light drinkers. In women, however, the smallest amount of alcohol had visible effects on the brain in comparison with women who had quit alcohol or had never drunk at all.
The good news for casual drinkers is that the brain’s volume hasn’t been linked to the brain’s cognitive or memorizing capacities. The difference between the brain volume in heavy drinkers and abstainers were also quite negligible, at an average of 1.5%.
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