Associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes
nature.com
nature.com
(I skimmed to the introductory paragraph where they talk about confounders, but don't see alcohol history listed as a confounder.)
"It is reasonable to expect that the relationship we observe would differ in younger individuals who have not experienced the chronic effects of alcohol on the brain. An additional limitation stems from the self-reported alcohol intake measures in the UK Biobank, which cover only the year prior to participation. Such estimates may not adequately reflect drinking prior to the past year and are susceptible to reporting and recall bias.
Further, our analyses do not account for individuals with a past diagnosis of AUD. Earlier studies have shown that the brain shows some recovery with the cessation of drinking in individuals with AUD, but this varies with age and sex, and recovery might be incomplete. Thus, a past diagnosis of AUD would likely influence our results. We hope future studies will shed light on how a history of AUD with prolonged recovery is associated with brain structure in middle-aged and older adults."
Definitely shows there is some grey and white matter reduction... but the impact doesn't seem drastic? Do I use that 1%? Do other activities reduce my brain of 1%? I don't know the scale of volume they use. I could be wrong.
And looking at figure 2[1], age is also a major factor for change in white/grey volume (which they normalize).
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/figures/2
It's only when there is a direct short-term life-threat that people seem bothered to take action (see COVID).
Aren't you enjoying the benefits of those pollutants ? The sheer fact that you are posting on HN means that you have access to a device that was produced thousands of miles away and got delivered to you. No one forced you to own one, that was your choice.
Just because you are not the one physically emitting the stuff does not mean you share no responsibility for it.
The supply chain for our basic necessities of life maims and kills people but we consider putting food on plates to be well worth the tradeoffs. Having a blood diamond on your ring is not something we consider to be worth the tradeoffs. The tradeoffs made to get a smartphone or computer into a consumer's hand, along with the tradeoffs of consuming booze, exist somewhere in the nuanced continuum between those fairly extreme example points.
A simpler explanation is - a "blood" diamond has a fairly explicit consequence, manufacturing consequences aren't so obvious or necessary.
I'd also note that it should be possible to police these things - diamonds without blood, tech without pollution - consumer boycotts aren't often so successful vs legal policy changes.
I disagree; in fact, brake pads have stopped cars. ;)
What about exposure to television programming? Does that have an impact on brain mass? Soft drinks? Carbohydrates? Music?
It’s not absurd to say the negative effects of air pollution on this specific outcome are mostly negligible but still not want air pollution for other reasons. Which is a hypothetical statement of course because we don’t have any data here.
I’d like to see the same comparison between people living in cities or countryside.
Every piece of technology that carried your commentary from your fingertips to my eyeballs has a nonzero environmental impact. Some watershed in Asia had to be fractionally (after all, the mine likely supplied material for far more devices than yours and mine) poisoned so you could say that.
Is that sufficient purpose?
Keep in mind modern society exists at the end of a very, very, very long and interconnected supply chain so the raw material from the mine probably (fractionally, of course) finds its way into smoke alarms and pacemakers. Trying to define "purpose" is an unbelievably complex can of worms.
It's actually quite easy to calculate fwiw, a 'unit' is 10ml ethanol:
2pints * 0.052 / 10
= 2(568ml) * 0.052 / 10
= 5.9072 units
You can sustain a pretty serious drinking problem that will cause long term harm to your health while also remaining a functional member of society, even getting up to the bottle of scotch a day or more tier.
A fair amount of my professional peers are basically highly functional alcoholics, who have not yet reached a point where it causes sufficient impact on them to recognise the problem.
Most of those people may well have access to professional help, they just don't use it because they don't see a problem. Yet.
The disease isn't defined by any outcome other than alcohol consumption and dependence.
To be exact: his was high functionning until he wasn't. From my understanding, he had a bad week (health troubles), which spiraled into a worse one at work. He took a month off, but was so nervous and on the edge that he beat his kid, and his ex-wife told him to put himself together or she would ask for full custody (basically you only see your child two weekend a week instead of half/half).
Don't know what happened then (i had taken my distance since the divorce). The day before he had to go back to work (or the day after, not sure), he killed himself.
[edit] This is my flawed understanding of the events. It probably did not happen like this exactly, most of it was discussions at the church and after the incineration (we usually have dinner with friends and family during those times where i live).
Mostly I think unbinding basic health care in the US from employment would help with many issues. I don't know how people are supposed to be able to heal from illness while also putting in their efforts to a full time job.
Same goes for other drugs - I know a few people who are dependant on opiates or cocaine, but function just fine in society.
Standard Control:
GMV WMV
1–2 AU −0.127 −0.074
2–3 AU −0.223 −0.129
So cumulatively, 0-3 drinks is is GMV: -0.380, WMV: -0.223
What I don't know and can't seem to find with a quick search is the conversion method for IDP standard deviations in brain matter relate to absolute percentages of brain matter (which I assume is not linear?). If your comment is correct, then these numbers correlate to an absolute reduction of 2% of brain matter?
I also see that the third drink seems to do about 50% more standard deviation movement than the former 2 put together.
EDIT: Never mind it's been a while since I took statistics, I remembered that standard deviations _are_ a linear amount. I'd been thinking of percentile placement on a normal distribution.
Grey matter is about 40% of the brain, white matter is 60%, so if we're talking about absolute matter, we should factor that in.
For 0 to 3 drinks:
GMV: -0.380 x 0.4 = -0.152 SD WMV: -0.223 x 0.6 = -0.1338 SD
Should be sum of 0.2858 standard deviations of total brain matter, or about 2.5% reduction.
For 0 to 2 drinks:
GMV: -0.157 x 0.4 = -0.0628 SD WMV: -0.094 x 0.6 = -0.0564 SD
0.1192 SD or about 1.05% reduction
One glass of wine, 125 ml, at 8%, is one UK unit. Half a .75l bottle of wine at 14% would be 5.25 units.
It's not unusual in the UK for people to drink half a bottle of wine each evening, and then more on the weekends.
We drink a lot. It causes a lot of harm.
> The notion that a person uses only 10 percent of their brain is a myth. fMRI scans show that even simple activities require almost all of the brain to be active.
A lot of people who don't drink are not abstaining for some health augmentation or lifestyle choice, but because drinking any amount of alcohol would send them into a very early grave.
It seems like these hidden confounding factors are more plausible of an explanation that the "0 drinks per day" group has higher morbidity, compared to "alcohol is healthy in moderate amounts" explanation for the bottom of the J curve.
That's just one group. There are other groups, I'm sure, but that's the one I'm painfully familiar with.
I used to drink socially when I was young, and I usually had more than that.
I'm vaguely familiar with the term "synaptic plasticity" to roughly mean the way the brain processes information and how it changes over time with varying life experiences.
It seems to me that one's risk-taking behavior may reduce brain matter volume, yet still improve quality of life because experience itself (literally the way the brain is wired) is worth far more. Some experiences are practically impossible without alcohol due to its social and cultural significance.
To make a dumb metaphor, consider the fact that the raw number of pixels contained in an image isn't necessarily correlated with its success. What is a life, but a meme?
Disclosure: I'm buzzed right now btw :p
I have to say that this matches my (few) experiences with chronic drinkers quite well. I've seen them become less inhibited and less self-aware and become more selfish over a couple of decades, even when they're sober.
It's like they become robots. While it's definitely bad for health, I'm not sure broader society really cares because good health isn't necessarily correlated with success in life past a certain point.
My somewhat more positive counterexamples roughly fall into the dichotomy of introverts and extroverts (yeah yeah I know).
On the introvert side, I've seen hard drinking make people into creatures of habit. Not necessarily "bad" habits, but habits nonetheless such as overworking themselves in a narrow field, deep hobbies, etc. "drunken masters" so to speak.
On the extrovert side, I've seen hard drinking train people to optimize for high charisma, handling crowds, and deep knowledge of conflict resolution to the detriment of being able to learn any other skills or really appreciate the world in any other way. The "life of the party" while being just as dead inside as the introverted example above.
They get trapped into a certain way of life from the brain damage. I'm definitely not advocating alcohol abuse just sharing my perspective. I'm pretty sure more people drink than abstain so this isn't a topic that can be dismissed as just purely bad.
If anyone knows of research on this kind of topic that would be amazing. Too often this is only discussed via movies, ads, and personal stories which are all strongly biased.
Yes, sadly that might be. In my youth heavy drinking was the norm, all the cool kids and pretty girls did it and to connect to them, you had to do it, too. Those who did not, were the depressed loosers.
So to socialize, you had to poison yourself.
From an individual point of view that makes sense, but overal I believe it makes more sense, to change that culture around alcohol.
And luckily since then, I met people who can have crazy wild parties, without being wasted. I love dancing, but I hate to avoid uncoordinated drunk idiots on the dancefloor.
I mean, I still do like a beer or a coctail occasionally and I see nothing wrong with it. But needing alcohol to socialize or party is not healthy at all and I would like to see the obligatory drunkness to go away.
Not just because of drunk parties, but also because this culture gets people hooked into alcoholism and then families get destroyed.
I don't think there's anything evil about drinking, I've just gotten this far in my life without it and figure "heck, might as well go for broke" at this point. I do believe that alcohol advertisements on TV and radio should be banned like tobacco ads were, though. The fact that I have been conditioned by ads since I was a kid to think that beer is delicious and harmless is unnerving to me.
Ideally, drinking ought to be a personal choice to exchange risk for pleasure. This only holds true when drinking is done responsibly, though. Irresponsible drinking can ruin lives, relationships, and hurt or kill people. Budweiser and Heineken may be required to say "drink responsibly" at the end of all their ads, but it's extremely obvious they don't actually care. At the end of the day, they make more money off alcoholics than responsible drinkers, so they and their marketing cannot be trusted. The incentives are too misaligned.
My mistake was avoiding parties and socialization in college along with drinking.
Also watching people around you get drunk a couple of times early on was quite the turn off. It’s actually rather sad.
Often I am considered to ‘have excellent memory’ compared to my peers (I am 44 now).
There was no religious motivation to start and even though I was Buddhist for a few years I consider myself Atheist now. It was just an early aversion towards the taste and then a heightened sense of peer pressure that didn’t sit well with me. After that it became a game of ‘let’s see how long I can keep it up’. Now it’s second nature - but I do notice there is a deep seated aversion towards alcohol and probably a side effect of conditioning myself against it. That probably goes with all drugs (I don’t take any)
And finally yes, society is very hostile towards sobriety. Less so in the US. People always feel embarrassed and defensive, interestingly enough.
It also turns out to be a great example to people who struggle with alcohol and children, so I am rather happy having stayed away from the rat poison ;-)
that's how it looks to me when non-drinkers have to explain every time themselves
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-alcohol-1890?t...
Do we know if alcohol decreases gray and white matter volumes? Could the causation run in the reverse direction? Bi-directionally? Or could there be some common cause (e.g., proneness to "risky" behavior) that leads to both?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
Rather than disregard every study, I just sort of internally give it a 50% weight and move on. Maybe it's bogus, maybe it's not, but surely some of them are correctly identifying causation.
Life is too short to quibble about this crap.
Well, it's still true, and still applicable.
> You're not wrong, but you know, sometimes it is causation.
No, I don't know, and neither do you. That's... kind of the problem.
Yup, so have a drink when you want, or don't. We will all die eventually.
Then why bother doing science at all?
There are ways to determine the correlation vs causation problem, but yes it takes more effort - possibly redesigning studies, follow up studies etc.
But that's just the price of knowledge. And knowledge is worth quibbling over.
> "Partial recovery of brain function with abstinence suggests that a proportion of the deÆcits must be neurochemical in origin while neuronal loss from selected brain regions indicates permanent and irreversible damage. The factors influencing these two components are unknown..."
Kril, J. J., & Halliday, G. M. (1999). Brain shrinkage in alcoholics: a decade on and what have we learned? Progress in Neurobiology, 58(4), 381–387.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/s0301-0082(98)00091-4
Here's something on mechanisms from 2021:
> "Various mechanisms underlie ethanol-induced cell death, with oxidative stress and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress being the main pro-apoptotic mechanisms in alcohol abuse and FASD. Oxidative and ER stresses are induced by thiamine deficiency, especially in alcohol abuse, and are exacerbated by neuroinflammation, particularly in fetal ethanol exposure."
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/16/8678
Yes, psychedelics and cannabis are safer recreational drugs than alcohol is, and maybe opiates and cocaine are not really any worse. Revising drug laws to account for such realities is long overdue - although banning marketing and promoting public health campaigns on risks and side effects are also good ideas.
The negative health effects from moderate use of these are really not that bad, but it's very hard to moderately use them, they're a bit moreish.
Although alcohol is pretty moreish too, and the withdrawals can be really bad. (Your body develops a chemical dependence to the point that stopping cold turkey can actually kill you)
It should be noted that a single 'weak' 5% beer is 1.65 DAUs.
Seriously though, why doesn't the unit of 1 DAU correspond with any existing commercial form factors?
A single 12oz 5% beer would be a more helpful starting point.
A lot of people are going to assume that 1 standard drink === 1 glass of wine/beer. They're not going to read the fine print on government messaging.
[0]I presume if permanent single-person shrinkage was observed it would have been a big enough headline to have been noticed. [1]Unless accounted for in sampling, drinkers would be statistically more likely to be experiencing transiently smaller brains from alcohol consumption or accompanying dehydration - if an effect exists.
Saving on the restaurant, and eliminating the liquor store, bills was gravy.
Company xmas party is coming up, I'll have a couple to drink there because its free but I'll be super lightweight so only a couple will do anyway.
Or, a population with a greater incentive to lie about past consumption?..
Did anyone find anything on lower levels of consumption? I've had a hard time finding evidence related to any potential harm from having 2 drinks/mo, for example. I could imagine this would be very different than 30 drinks/mo.
I don't have data for what happens when I have 2+ drinks but that definitely has a deleterious effect on my sleep. Especially after 3.
I could die next year or even tomorrow and not cracking a few cold ones would have zero impact on that. I don’t mean this as an endorsement for endless boozing either, just sharing some perspective.
> Our analyses comprise models that include two different sets of control variables. The standard set includes standardized age, standardized age squared standardized height, handedness (right/left/ambidextrous; dummy-coded), sex (female:0, male:1), current smoker status, former light smoker, former heavy smoker, and standardized Townsend index of social deprivation measured at the zip code level62. To control for genetic population structure, the models also include the first 40 genetic principal components63 and county of residence (dummy-coded)62. A second set of extended control variables includes all standard control variables and in addition standardized BMI, standardized educational attainment64, and standardized weight. To determine whether observations at the extreme ends of the drinking distribution bias the estimates of the relationship between alcohol intake and IDPs, we also estimate a model that excludes abstainers and a model that excludes heavy drinkers (i.e., women who reported consuming more than 18 units/week and men who consumed more than 24 units/week), both with standard controls.
Here they talk about the different groupings:
> we bin participants in the following six categories based on average alcohol intake: (1) abstainers, (2) individuals who drank less than one unit/day, (3) individuals who drank between one (included) and two (excluded) units/day (recommended maximal alcohol consumption based on the UK Chief Medical Officers “low-risk” guidelines32), (4) individuals who drank between two (included) and three (excluded) units/day, (5) individuals who drank between three (included) and four (excluded) units/day, and (6) individuals who drank at least four units/day.
Again no mention of sober alcoholics or health problems.
This study: https://www.massgeneral.org/news/press-release/large-study-c... found that while moderate drinkers had better cardiovascular health than non-drinkers, this was due to other lifestyle factors associated with moderate drinking, not the drinking itself.
That is definitely something to be grateful for. I too, enjoy thinking deeply, and abstain from Alcohol when trying to solve problems.
But thinking can also be torture and sometimes I just want to drown out all the depression and anxiety. Alcohol is good for delaying that. Only problem is it’s a temporary fix, and the agony comes back stronger.
Alcohol is also good for dumbing yourself down to the same intellectual level as a social group.
The reason I’m working towards being a nondrinker is so I can confront my mental issues in a healthy way, and so my kids don’t see me destroy myself as they grow up.
Of course, if you find it adversely affecting you, then you owe it to yourself to abstain.
Back in my gigging days, we called it “the perfect buzz”. 1-2 drinks before performing worked well- but more than that did not.
I only share so much because for some of us it’s a very slippery slope. I used to not be aware of _why_ I was drinking so much.
I do really enjoy the taste of a craft beer, or a decent bourbon. The part I’m working on now is balance. I don’t want to get to where I _have_ to stop drinking.
So does canabis (albeit in a rather creative way). I love the stuff but it's definitely better in smaller and infrequent doses.
Alcohol, on the other hand, I have really not found especially helpful for creativity. YMMV.
A thought experiment I've put myself through is would I still be pursuing software if I has unlimited access to sex, drugs and entertaining people were magnetically attracted to me.
I don't know the answer to that question, but I've had moments of satiation with regards to those things and I end up learning and/or thinking deeply - and in those moments it is the most pleasurable thing.
This is probably different for everyone because after being satiated being alone and thinking is what I like to do. I've also completely stopped drinking for similar reasons as the grandparent comment.
But it's more then just drugs, sex and fame. Your children, the love of your wife, friends. That sort of thing can make you happy.
Just thinking though typically does not make anyone happy, and this can be verified. Happiness is associated with endorphins and part of your brain lighting up in an MRI.
Also if you "think" about it even further. If humans can actually "think" themselves into happiness, a lot of the stresses of the real world would magically disappear. Survival of the fittest does not allow this. A content human is not one positioned to compete and survive. We are wired to never be fully satiated, never to be happy for long. Our brains give us a taste of happiness so that we can spend most of our lives working to chase it. Because an unsatisfied person is a competitive person and that makes him evolutionarily more fit.
Being fully aware of our evolutionary nature actually hinders survival. Nature wants us to live in an illusion thinking we're chasing a goal with an endpoint that equates to contentment and happiness. If you "think" too much, as I have, you see past the illusion and you're now less likely to play the "game" so to say.
What I realized from "thinking" too much is that it actually makes you MORE unhappy. It makes you realize the horrible truth of most things and the pointlessness of many other things.
No offense to parent but what I see from his statement is basically someone who hasn't thought deeply about certain things too much.
People do attempt to think themselves into happiness with therapy see some benefit.
Just thinking - yes, probably not going to make anyone extremely happy.
But I still believe it's a plausible argument that after any cycle or combination of sex, drugs, fame, family, friends there may be a point where, for some people, thinking/problem solving may have it's place as the most pleasurable option in that moment.
And the winning combination for some people may be family, friends and problem solving, rather than family, friends and drugs. So it's possible they are not lying to themselves. It may maximize pleasure over time.
You probably found a success niche via problem solving.. and interpreted the source of your happiness as "thinking through problems." If you continuously failed to solve problems while thinking you obviously wouldn't be happy so it isn't "thinking" or "problem solving" that triggers this... it's success. Thus there are other avenues to this version of happiness outside of problem solving, you just need to find something you're successful at. If problem solving is it, so be it.
Instead, we look around, and see that vices fall into a handful of categories: trick the brain into making the feel-good chemicals (risk-taking, sex, good food) or sticking the feel-good chemicals in there yourself (drugs, booze).
I'm not going to assert that I know the greatest pleasure possible. Someone's probably out here stretched out on MDMA while cliff-jumping into a volcano or some likewise truly insane shit. But I can assert that that person is experiencing pleasure unfathomable by anyone who asserts that the greatest pleasure is "thinking".
Probably some integral of pleasure is part of the equation, and it depends on you preference for pleasure distribution. But maybe I'm blurring the line between pleasure and fulfillment.
The animistic or instinctual side of happiness triggered by drugs is not purely a module but it can be encapsulated into a concept called the the mesolimbic dopamine pathway. This pathway can be mechanically manipulated to make you feel a certain portion of happiness via drugs sex or the natural secretion of dopamine.
The thing about this module is that it lives separately from another module called the neocortex. The neocortex encompasses the higher functionality of your brain with things like higher order thoughts, perception and consciousness. The unique thing about the neocortex is that it can self actualize. It can see signals being sent by other parts of the brain and it can override or interpret those signals as false. This is what happens when you do something like exercise. One part of your brain tells you you're tired, but your neocortex overrides this and forces you to continue because you're aware that the feeling is an illusion. Exercise is actually healthy.
For someone to feel truly happy the mesolimbic dopamine pathway and the neocortex need to be in alignment. The dopamine hit must register AND the neocortex must validate that feeling as well. Signals of happiness from one module but not the other register as sort of an invalid false happiness.
For example when you're an addict and you're doing heroin the reward pathway sends a signal, but the neocortex denies it. The addict is generally unhappy even though he gets "high" all the time. For the parent poster, the neocortex is telling himself he's happy by "thinking" but there's no dopamine hit from the mesolimbic pathway. The in-congruence from both modules in the brain form a happiness that isn't quite real. To truly be happy you need both.
Also note that the brain additionally develops tolerance to dopamine so any feeling of happiness is relatively fleeting. You need to use different stimuli and go through long periods of "no dopamine" to feel happy. Humans are biologically designed this way by evolution.
I'm sorry to tell you this, because in general being aware of all of this generally makes people less happy. Ignorance is part of what makes all of this work, because it is your neocortex that is determining all of this. Knowledge of this influences how your neocortex chooses to override certain signals from the mesolimbic pathway... it's all very very meta.
We may be splitting hairs because this stemmed from a comment saying thinking is the most pleasurable thing in the world and you said anyone who thinks that way is lying to themselves.
Through your biological lens I have no choice but to agree, the thing that is most pleasurable in the world is mesolimbic dopamine pathway and the neocortex alignment (or so I'm told).
But through a conversational lens I guess it's all how you get there. And thinking->problem solving->success is a plausible path to get there which is why I disagree with your statement that they are lying to themselves, ignoring the existential truth that we are always lying to ourselves.
Sure, if this is what he means, then he is correct. But what he wrote is just "thinking" which is false.
>which is why I disagree with your statement that they are lying to themselves, ignoring the existential truth that we are always lying to ourselves.
It is a bit. The success of problem solving usually comes with only a mild dopamine hit. There are way more situations that create a greater surge of dopamine. Parent stated "thinking" was the most pleasurable thing ever which obviously not the case for people in general.
For example it's much more pleasurable to win a billion dollars or successfully bed the hottest girl in the club or to dominate everyone else in some competition. Clearly our biology is geared towards giving huge rushes of dopamine for situations that aren't exactly tied to "thinking" or strictly "problem solving". I find it hard to believe that the parent is completely unaware of this. He must know on some level. That's why I claim he's lying to himself.
I consider it a fair point of discussion.