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!"

Comments

It's true!

[jd]

If all your braincells are dead from alcohol poisoning, I guarantee you won't get dementia.

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.

Re:Disturbingly easy to code while drunk...

[iwan-nl]

Ah, absinthe! The source inspiration of many artists and geniuses.

It contains a chemical compound very similar to THC (the active component of marihuana), and it's been banned in Holland for a long long time, which is quite odd 'cause buying pot is legal here. Many believed it would make you crazy like hell. However, science could never back this statement, and now (thanks to new EU laws) it's available again since last year.

I like your choice in drinks. I'm not sure about the music though :P

On the subject of drunk coding, it has always worked out good for me. In my experience it's especially usefull when prototyping. It helps me think "out of the box".