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Alcohol is Good for Your Brain
An anonymous reader writes "A new study reported on by Nature is saying that moderate consumption of alchohol wards off dementia. Better drink up!"
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yeahr i drank all la time n look at me! alchol nver di d me any harm
It damages your stomach lining, damages your liver and can cause diabetes, increases your weight, and increases your risk of bowel cancer.
Moderation is a very good idea.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
I wonder if this study has any relation to the one about how beer can prevent cancer. Woudl be interesting to see if it was the actual alcohol, or possibly a by-product of the alcohol making process.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
With news like this then January 24th WILL be the worst day of the year for me! My resolution can only take so much bombardment!
90's? How many times we've heard about good then bad effects of coffee? It's same thing now with alcohol - it's a fad no more than that... I say - we live only once so party hard while you have a chance and especially if you are a nerd - there will be only fewer of them chances in the future... just make sure that your fun does not cause other people's suffering - driving while drunk isn't cool - you wouldn't be writing code while drunk, would you?
so how does this help /. users?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
you wouldn't be writing code while drunk, would you?
Actually, I've found it more than a little disturbing to learn just how easy it is to write code after a couple of glasses of wine. Or even a bottle.
Makes you realize that a monkey really could do this shit...
All day, I've been wanting to crack into a bottle of Sake I got in my stocking.
I read that, and cracked into it.
Cheers!
I find that large amounts work pretty good for dementia too.
At least near-term dementia.
STOP. You're being farmed.
...to make it healthy?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Beer is very bad for laptop keyboards.
Trust me, your computer isn't thirsty.
"Me? Drunk? No officer, I've merely been warding off dementia!"
Oh, Lisa, you and your stories:
"Bart is a vampire."
"Beer kills brain cells."
Now let's go back to that...building...thingy, where our beds and TV...is.
I guess I have a habit of doing this. I can't remember doing it, but I find a comment in my code that says: "//Fix Later, too drunk." every couple of months.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
The effects of alcohol on heart disease is also a myth. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the effect is from flavenoids, which are found in grapes and therefore found in wines.
It is certainly possible that there are chemicals which will block dementia. It depends on exactly what the underlying mechanisms are. For example, if an accumulation of some molecule XYZ is shown to be a cause, then all you need to do is find something that'll help eliminate it from the body.
For toxic levels of iron, for example, you'd probably use something like deferoxamine (DFO) which makes it possible to filter the excess iron out of the system.
Selenium, in high enough doses, is known to cause all sorts of neurological problems. Aluminium is suspected of doing the same. Mercury doesn't even need high doses. And these are just your basic elements. We're not even into the compounds.
One form of senile dementia - Alzheimer's Disease - is associated with the crushing of brain cells by the formation of a form of tau protein. Since proteins can't pass through the blood-brain barrier, it seems reasonable to suppose that the tau protein is manufactured by the brain itself.
This would seem to require two components - an instruction to produce this protein and something to cause that instruction to be carried out endlessly. Not a million miles from how cancers are a result of a cell replicating itself endlessly. Same infinite loop, different function call in the DNA.
There is considerable evidence that many cancers have an external component to trigger the infinite loop. It seems reasonable to deduce from this that other infinite loops are triggered the same way. A loop is a loop is a loop. It doesn't matter what's in it.
From this, we can also reasonably deduce that avoiding trigger chemicals and/or taking in something that'll prevent the body retaining or picking up those trigger chemicals would likely reduce your chances of getting dementias caused by this kind of process.
So far, so good. The first problem is that dementia covers a VERY wide range of conditions, few of which have been studied and even fewer understood. The second problem is that there isn't much good data on the environmental factors in dementia and the data that does exist (say for Aluminium) is so controversial that it is next to useless as a practical guide. Finally, the third problem is that even if you produce a list of suspects, there simply aren't any known ways of getting rid of many of them and more than a few of those are extremely toxic themselves, making them useless for a DIY remedy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What the study considers moderate drinking is on average no more than a single glass of wine (wine glass, not tumbler), a single bottle/can of beer, or a single shot or mixed drink containing no more than a shot's worth of alcohol in a day. That is moderation. The damage from exceeding that moderate level outweighs the benefits very quickly.
PS: Read a little bit more and you find out that the study was only done on a group of women (no men - just assumptions of equivalent or greater effect).
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Baahh! I've lived through the years of Prohibition and haven't had a drink since then! I'm not demented like a monkey drinks on the first date of his bar mitvah. Why do people say I'm demented?
Linux at home
Just like your muscles get bigger and stronger as they heal after a tough workout, so does your brain get denser and smarter as it heals from a weekend of heavy drinking.
Marge:
Homer: Don't mind if I do!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
My experience with a family member and more recently with a friend suggests that alcohol consumption and related health and cognitive problems may be a be more of a problem than people let on. Is consumption of 10 ounces of vodka a day problematic? I observed this level of consumption in an 80 year old not long before that person had to enter an assisted-living home for memory problems. Is this kind of alcohol consumption a cause of dementia or a symptom of it?
And I don't think the AA 12-step program traditional approach to alcoholism really addresses the problem because that school of thought addresses people who "hit rock bottom" and need a fresh start on life. I am talking about old people who are thoroughly habituated to high levels of alcohol and you wouldn't know a person drank that much unless you went through their bottle recycling and counted the bottles that went in each week.
I guess the reason I am seconding your point of view and getting all excited about "alcohol wards off dementia" is that alcohol is hard to restrict to that one drink per day, especially in elderly people who feel they have diminished levels of responsibility in retirement and feel they can handle their drinking.
With bad stomach from all the Mt. Dew and junk food, diabetes from too much sweets and increased weight from, you know, sitting at our computers all day -- BUT WE STILL VALUE OUR BRAIN! ;-)
Reminder -- you are not on the "Health Channel" (or whatever)...
Paul B.
Your analogy doesn't hold at all to what the quote says.
If you want to stick with the auto analogies, it would be more like saying an 18 wheeler will perform better with 17 tires than 18 tires, one of which is over inflated.
Large consumption have their uses as well. I've killed off almost all the braincells which were storing images of Bill Gates 1983 Teen Beat Mag! On the downside I can't remember my cats name, or at least I think she's mine.
Look what consuming mass quantities of alcohol did for Arthur Dent. Not only was he able to stave off dementia, but he was able to withstand the rigors of space travel on a Vogon ship. If that isn't an endorsement of alcohol, I'm not sure what is.
I uust dr4ank seven tshots of tequila and myf brain doens't feel asdny healthyier.
After reading this article, I was entrigued..But, could not help but wonder what the amount of alcohol one should consume daily was. So, on my own accord, I did some research. I learned from 'Clarence', a local bum who I talk to at work sometimes when he digs through our dumpster, and here's what he told me:
"i fixin to get me two mo' dollas for a forty ounce and a cheebugga"
There it is. From a man who lives without shelter in -5F weather in New England. The proper daily amount is, 40 fluid ounces of Malt Liqour.
There have been earlier studies that have shown that daily, moderate alcohol comsumption can help prevent both heart diseases and stroke.
Thats around 1-3 drinks per day
But again earlier studies have shown that excess alcohol drinking can lead to the destruction of the liver or can be toxic to the brain (alcoholic dementia)
The new study showing that alcohol may fight Alzheimer's involved more than 5,000 people over the age of 55 and lasted for six years.
At the beginning of the study, none of the participants had any signs of dementia. At the end of the study, around 197 of the participants developed Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. Those who drank between 1 to 3 drinks per day had a 42% lower risk of developing dementia than the nondrinkers. Those who did not drink daily but had more than one drink per week day had a 25% lower risk of developing dementia than the nondrinkers.
One final point, it did not seem to matter what people drank, (beer, wine or liquor), the effect was the same.
So as alcohol may bring you a more fun life , fun can be good for you!
But in this world anything is bad for you so drink up and enjoy a more exciting life!
I have not updated the book since I wrote it, but since its first publication, scores of well-conducted, peer-reviewed studies in the top scientific and medical publications have continued to conform the earlier evidence and -- like this one in Nature -- have found even more healthy results from moderate consumption.