Category: Alcohol

People also reported sleeping better, having more energy and increased concentration.

Giving up alcohol for January helps most people lose weight, new research finds.

On top of weight loss, people report sleeping better, having more energy and increased concentration.

Despite only giving up alcohol for January, people were still drinking less six months later, the results showed.

Merely trying to give up alcohol for January has beneficial effects almost as great as being dry for the whole month, the researchers found.

Dr Richard de Visser, who led the research, said:

“The simple act of taking a month off alcohol helps people drink less in the long term: by August people are reporting one extra dry day per week.

There are also considerable immediate benefits: nine in ten people save money, seven in ten sleep better and three in five lose weight.

Interestingly, these changes in alcohol consumption have also been seen in the participants who didn’t manage to stay alcohol-free for the whole month – although they are a bit smaller.

This shows that there are real benefits to just trying to complete Dry January.”

The conclusions come from a study of over 800 people who took part in ‘Dry January’ in 2018.

People reported a huge range of benefits from giving up alcohol for January:

• 93% of participants had a sense of achievement;
• 88% saved money;
• 82% think more deeply about their relationship with drink;
• 80% feel more in control of their drinking;
• 76% learned more about when and why they drink;
• 71% realised they don’t need a drink to enjoy themselves;
• 70% had generally improved health;
• 71% slept better;
• 67% had more energy;
• 58% lost weight;
• 57% had better concentration;
• 54% had better skin.

Dr Richard Piper, CEO of Alcohol Change UK, said:

“Put simply, Dry January can change lives.

We hear every day from people who took charge of their drinking using Dry January, and who feel healthier and happier as a result.

The brilliant thing about Dry January is that it’s not really about January.

Being alcohol-free for 31 days shows us that we don’t need alcohol to have fun, to relax, to socialise.

That means that for the rest of the year we are better able to make decisions about our drinking, and to avoid slipping into drinking more than we really want to.

Many of us know about the health risks of alcohol – seven forms of cancer, liver disease, mental health problems – but we are often unaware that drinking less has more immediate benefits too.

Sleeping better, feeling more energetic, saving money, better skin, losing weight… The list goes on.

Dry January helps millions to experience those benefits and to make a longer-lasting change to drink more healthily.”

See the Dry January website for more information.

It can damage memory, problem-solving skills and the ability to read emotions.

Alcohol consumption is regularly linked to long-term brain damage by research.

It can damage memory, problem-solving skills and the ability to read emotions.

Even moderate alcohol intake is linked to brain damage and worse mental skills.

There is little or no evidence that even low levels of alcohol are beneficial for the brain.

Dr Ksenija Marinkovic, the study’s first author, said:

“Like most body organs, the brain is vulnerable to injury from excessive alcohol consumption.

Most common deficits include difficulties with memory, reduced reasoning and problem solving abilities, and emotional abnormalities.”

Naturally, alcoholics are at a much higher risk of brain damage.

One aspect of this is a deficit in reading facial emotions, said Dr Marinkovic:

“Alcoholics have problems in judging the emotional expressions on people’s faces.

This can result in miscommunication during emotionally charged situations and lead to unnecessary conflicts and difficulties in interpersonal relationships.

The resulting negative repercussions can, in turn, contribute to increased drinking.”

The study involved 30 people, half of whom were recovering alcoholics.

Their brains were scanned while they were given a test of how good they were at reading emotions from faces.

The results showed that recovering alcoholics did worse.

The area of the brain important for processing emotions — the amygdala — did not respond as strongly in recovering alcoholics.

Dr Marinkovic explained:

“…deficient activation of limbic structures inside the temporal lobes – the amygdala and hippocampus – may underlie emotional difficulties in abstinent long-term alcoholics.

Whereas nonalcoholic adult men showed stronger activation in the amygdala and hippocampus when viewing faces with emotional expressions, the alcoholics showed decreased activation in these brain areas, and furthermore responded in an undifferentiated manner to all facial expressions.”

Professor Edith V. Sullivan, study co-author, said:

“…alcoholics may be at a special disadvantage in detecting emotion-filled facial expression, which we all naturally use to convey information, such as warnings, love, anger, and defense, among others, and assume that the intended message is accurately perceived.”

The study was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (Marinkovic et al., 2009).

Alcohol helps remove damaging waste from the brain.

A couple of alcoholic drinks can help clear the brain of toxins, new research finds.

Low levels of alcohol — the equivalent of around 2.5 standard drinks per day — may help to remove waste linked to Alzheimer’s disease and reduce inflammation in the brain.

Dr Maiken Nedergaard, who led the study, said:

“Prolonged intake of excessive amounts of ethanol is known to have adverse effects on the central nervous system.

However, in this study we have shown for the first time that low doses of alcohol are potentially beneficial to brain health, namely it improves the brain’s ability to remove waste.”

The study helps support the view of some research that suggests low levels of alcohol intake can be beneficial.

The new study gave varying amounts of alcohol to mice and looked at the effect on their brains.

Those given high levels of alcohol over a long period showed increasing levels of damaging inflammation.

They also had worse cognitive and motor performance.

In the mice given low doses — equivalent to 2.5 standard drinks per day — the brain was more efficient at removing waste than those not exposed to alcohol.

The mice on low doses of alcohol also showed no differences in cognitive or motor performance with those given no alcohol.

Dr Nedergaard said:

“The data on the effects of alcohol on the glymphatic system seemingly matches the J-shaped model relating to the dose effects of alcohol on general health and mortality, whereby low doses of alcohol are beneficial, while excessive consumption is detrimental to overall health.

Studies have shown that low-to-moderate alcohol intake is associated with a lesser risk of dementia, while heavy drinking for many years confers an increased risk of cognitive decline.

This study may help explain why this occurs.

Specifically, low doses of alcohol appear to improve overall brain health.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Lundgaard et al., 2018).

Anxiety about speaking a foreign language often stops people performing at their best.

Alcohol can improve your ability to speak a foreign language, a new study finds.

A low dose of alcohol — around a pint of beer for a man — enabled German speakers to better use their newly learned Dutch.

Alcohol seems to be particularly beneficial for the pronunciation of foreign languages.

Although the study did not test this, it may be because alcohol lowers social anxiety and increases self-confidence.

Dr Inge Kersbergen, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Our study shows that acute alcohol consumption may have beneficial effects on the pronunciation of a foreign language in people who recently learned that language.

This provides some support for the lay belief (among bilingual speakers) that a low dose of alcohol can improve their ability to speak a second language.”

The study compared the effects of a low dose of alcohol with a control drink that contained no alcohol.

Both groups of native German speakers held a short conversation in Dutch with the experimenter.

Afterwards they rated themselves and were rated by native Dutch speakers.

People did not think they themselves were speaking Dutch any better after alcohol, but Dutch observers liked their pronunciation better.

Dr Fritz Renner, the study’s first author, said:

“It is important to point out that participants in this study consumed a low dose of alcohol.

Higher levels of alcohol consumption might not have beneficial effects on the pronunciation of a foreign language.”

Indeed alcohol damages the ability to pay attention, to remember and to….stand up straight.

Dr Jessica Werthmann, study co-author, said:

“We need to be cautious about the implications of these results until we know more about what causes the observed results.

One possible mechanism could be the anxiety-reducing effect of alcohol.

But more research is needed to test this.”

The study was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology (Renner et al., 2017).

The drink may help consolidate new memories.

Alcohol can enhance memory for things learned just before drinking, new research finds.

For the research, 88 people learned a series of words.

Half then drink around 4 UK units of alcohol.

This is around 2 standard drinks in the US.

When tested the next day, those that drank alcohol after learning could remember more words.

It is thought that alcohol may help to block out new information, so helping you retain what you have just learned.

Professor Celia Morgan, who led the research, said:

“Our research not only showed that those who drank alcohol did better when repeating the word-learning task, but that this effect was stronger among those who drank more.”

Professor Morgan continued:

“The causes of this effect are not fully understood, but the leading explanation is that alcohol blocks the learning of new information and therefore the brain has more resources available to lay down other recently learned information into long-term memory.

The theory is that the hippocampus — the brain area really important in memory — switches to ‘consolidating’ memories, transferring from short into longer-term memory.”

The study’s authors were quick to point out that alcohol has a limited positive effect when set against the damage to mental and physical health.

For example, one recent study found:

“Even moderate levels of alcohol consumption are linked to long-term brain damage and declines in mental skills, new research finds.

Moderate alcohol intake means around 14 to 21 UK units per week (in the US this is between 7 and 10 standard drinks, which are 12 oz of beer, 5 oz of wine etc.).

The study also found no support for the idea that low levels of alcohol intake are beneficial for the brain.

The conclusions come from a British study of 550 healthy men and women followed over 30 years.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Carlyle et al., 2017).