Chronic drinking linked to mental damage

Research shows that excessive alcohol drinking not only impacts a person’s mental state by decreasing their memory and learning capabilities but can also increase the risk of physical injuries.
In a recent study by the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, chronic drinking harms the hippocampal, a brain structure critical to learning and memory, which is vulnerable to damage from alcohol consumption.
According to scientists at the Center, the hippocampal helps the brain manage learning, especially learning and remembering new things or things that happened recently.
Examinations show that heavy drinking can reduce the total hippocampal value, thus reflecting a loss of hippocampal tissue substance. The study also showed that the hippocampal seemed to be smaller in people who frequently drank large amounts of alcohol for long periods of time.
Heather Burns, a senior nursing major from Baton Rouge, said there are many reasons why alcohol is illegal to adults under 21 and that the affect it has on the brain is just one main reason.
“Children don’t have the mental capabilities to handle the memory loss that drinking alcohol causes,” Burns said.
As reported in Sciencedaily.com, Thomas P. Beresford, Department of Veterans Affairs physician and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, said, “When we took a picture of the alcoholic brains using MRI and measured the hippocampal, it was much smaller than the hippocampal in the group of people who did not drink alcohol heavily.”
“This means that alcohol appears to injure the hippocampal by itself,” he said. “That is, it may harm the hippocampal in a way that other things do not.”
A study by the University of Queensland showed that people who drink alcohol are up to four times more likely than non-drinkers to be hurt from physical injuries such as a fall or punch.
The University also found that for the first six hours after drinking the risk of injury is quadrupled and doubled for the next 24 hours.
“This information makes me not want to drink as much because when you are drunk you are at a higher risk of hurting yourself or doing something crazy,” said Malcolm Donaldson, a sophomore rehabilitation major from Shreveport.
Specific drinks, such as beers, do not increase injury risk, but mixing drinks creates fives times more the risk, experts say.
“Car crashes are important and need to be cared about, but this research indicates that drinking alcohol increases all types of injuries, not just car crashes,” said Dr. Kerrianna Watt, a professor at University of Queensland School of Population Health.