You Are Actually Destroying Your Brain By Drinking

to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for it is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help if you actually need real help and you're in need of help please seek that out if you're in dire need of help you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them but don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help it's not it's just a Do you drink

alcohol? How much alcohol do you drink in a day? How much alcohol do you drink in a week? How much alcohol do you drink in a month? Have your relationships suffered because of your drinking? Have you been affected at work because of alcohol consumption? Are you in any kind of financial trouble because of alcohol consumption? Do you have any interactions with the legal system because of your alcohol consumption? Have you ever been hospitalized due to physical harm caused by alcohol consumption?

These are the kinds of questions that I ask clients when they come to my office seeking help for alcohol use disorder, one of the subsets of substance use disorder. They generally can answer questions. They're not very honest about them typically, but they can. But the one question that I can't ask them is, how is alcohol affecting your neurological and cognitive functioning of your brain? Is alcohol causing a reduction in the size of the gray matter of your brain?

What areas of your brain are specifically being affected caused by the amount of alcohol that you're consuming? These are questions that they can't answer because you can't see into a person's brain. You need specialized equipment to do that. And that's what scientists do. Neurologists are scientists.

psychiatrists are scientists and as scientists they want facts that way they can assess what's going on with neurological functioning your brain on alcohol is changed actually your whole body absorbs alcohol not just your brain but it really takes its toll on the brain alcohol interferes with the brain's communication pathways And it also can affect how your brain processes information, which is why I don't get accurate information when I ask those questions.

There are several stages of alcohol intoxication, and they do have an impact on the way that your brain functions, depending on how much you're consuming and how frequently and for how long. And there are so many things that affect the use of alcohol. that it's really difficult for somebody to have an accurate understanding of how much they're consuming. In those final end stages of alcoholism, many times people have no concept of how much they're drinking.

Vodka being consumed from an 8 or 12 ounce water bottle continually through the morning and how many times that bottle has been filled up usually is a question that can't be answered by most of my clients. I doubt that you, if you are at that stage, have any idea how much alcohol you're consuming. The only way to really know is perhaps to go through and look at your bank account and see how much money you're spending on alcohol.

But again, the decision making that goes on is impaired with that neurological functioning, which isn't happening. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor once said, the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. If the quality of your thoughts are being affected by the amount of alcohol you're consuming on a daily basis, you're not going to be happy. And that's how you end up in my office, a therapist who specializes in addiction and recovery.

So if I could teach you anything about recovery, The thing I would most like to teach you is that you're actually causing severe brain damage by consuming massive amounts of alcohol. It's not going to stop you, but it might teach you that consuming alcohol really isn't safe in any amount and actually does a lot more harm than you think. I often wonder what I would be if I hadn't consumed large amounts of alcohol in my life. Would I be a different person? Would I be smarter? Would I be different?

Probably would. So on this episode of Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard, it's a teaching moment. I'm going to teach you about what happens to your brain when you consume drugs. alcohol in small amounts and large amounts. There's so much research that's been going on and as scientists we need exact information. So that's what I'm going to present to you today is exact information about just how bad alcohol is for your brain. The science on heavy drinking and the brain is very clear.

The two do not have a healthy relationship. People who drink heavily and have alterations in brain structure and size that are associated with cognitive impairments. Research that was conducted recently on the relationship between alcohol and brain functioning. And that study was really revealing. A large study that came out of England. So in an attempt to bore you with a lot of science, because science matters. As opposed to not boring you with science. I'm going to bore you with science.

So just indulge me for a moment or two here so the study the study that was the associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes in a UK biobank and they went to the UK biobank because it was a it was a controlling database of 36,678 generally healthy middle-aged and older adults who could be studied and had been studied. So they were using that as a basis because it's a rock solid random sampling, I guess, if you will, of the population of individuals who drink.

And so they did all these measurements of the individual's head circumference, both males and females, and They tried to deal with variables such as age, daily alcohol consumption by unit, and the gray matter volume and the white matter volume of the brain, and then head size scaling factors for that. So they looked at the size of the circumference of the skull and then the associated brain size, and they were able to study that. the changes that occurred.

So the significant part of this is that they were testing the hypothesis that alcohol consumption changes the brain physically in size, not just does it change your attitude or behaviors or whatever. So in the introduction, they state that the alcohol consumption being one of the leading contributors to the global burden of disease and to high health care costs and economic costs, and that's kind of what was driving this study.

So the alcohol use disorder, and it's in our world of science, we call that the AUD, they identified it as being one of the most prevalent mental health conditions in the world. And that it does have harmful effects on physical, cognitive, and social functioning, which have been well studied.

And then they looked at chronic... usage of alcohol and so what happens in these studies is they try to understand what happens when you do something now understand for the people who are not um scientists scientists don't make an assumption of a hypothesis and go try to prove it correct what we do as scientists we try to um and let the facts dictate what is true and not true. Well, we have a hypothesis, but we don't try to prove it. We just try to see if it's correct or not.

So there's two outcomes of a study. You have a validation of your hypothesis, or you have a null hypothesis, is what we call it in the science world, which means that actually the opposite was true. So if I thought it was daytime at night, 12 noon and 12 noon, it's always sunny. And I just say, okay, I'm going to study 365 days in this one location, which is where I was trying to narrow it down. And I find out that it's sunny 72% of the time. So it's only a majority of the time sunny.

So that would be a true hypothesis if my hypothesis was that it was sunny all the time. And it would be a null hypothesis if, in fact, it was sunny only part of the time. So that's how it works when we look at studies. Anyway, so to go back to this one.

So the neuroimaging studies have shown that chronic heavy alcohol consumption, which they put in the category of three or more drinks per day, and that would be a unit of alcohol, one unit, meaning one... one drink, one ounce of hard liquor, one glass of wine that was, I think, four ounces or something, or one beer.

So it was three or more drinks for women per day, or four or more drinks for men on any day, is associated with widespread patterns of macro-structural and micro-structural changes, primarily affecting frontal, diencephalic and hippocampal and cerebral structures. So, they looked at the literature, said, okay, well, this is what happens.

So, the alcohol use disorder, AUD, they looked at a recent meta-analysis of individuals with AUD, showed lower gray matter volume, GMV, gray matter, brain tissue, and the cortisol corticostratolimbic circuits, including the regions of the prefrontal cortex, insula, superior temporal gyrus, and the stratum thalamus and the hippocampus compared to healthy individuals, healthy controlled individuals, control study of those, of the controls in the study.

So you have the control group and then you have the study group. Notably, lower GMV in the straddle, frontal, and thalmic regions were associated with alcohol use disorder, duration, or lifetime alcohol consumption. Okay, let me say that again. Lower gray matter volume in those areas, meaning less brain there. Although alcohol consumption can produce global and regional tissue volume changes, frontal regions are particularly associated with these effects.

See, that's your decision-making and your personality. So the part of the brain that makes decisions and your personality, there's less gray matter there. Further research suggested that the effects of alcohol's consumption on brain volume interact with the effects of aging. So you've got aging that affects the brain, and then on top of that, alcohol. So if you're younger and you're drinking, you're not going to have the aging effect.

But if you are drinking and you're older, you're going to have the aging effect. So you're going to have memory loss and cognitive decline naturally occurring, but then alcohol even accelerates that more. So Then they look at the alcohol consumption related to white matter, microstructural alterations being a hallmark associated with alcohol use disorder. So they looked at neuroimaging and the factors there.

Now, see, what's interesting is, so they're looking at, is there actually, and the whole purpose of this paper, this research, was to see if there's actually, for lack of a better term, does the brain shrink? And it turns out that that's true. There's extensive literature out there in the science world. The study of alcohol consumption with brain structure and microstructural changes in individuals with alcohol use disorder.

But there is limited research exploring these associations for individuals who consume alcohol but do not have alcohol use disorder. So some studies of middle-aged and older adults with moderate alcohol consumption was associated with lower total cerebral volume, gray matter atrophy, and lower density of brain matter in the frontal and periatal brain regions. So other studies failed to show an association, and some did.

One study showed a positive association of light to moderate alcohol consumption and gray matter volume in older men. So there's a lot of contradictory stuff out there. So what this study did was try to understand, is there actually a change there? So what was interesting was that the population they were looking at, and they were saying is, you know, what's the ages here?

40 to 69. largest available collection of high-quality MRI brain scans, alcohol-related behavioral phenotypes, and measurements of the socioeconomic environment. Because what they're trying to do is figure out is, you know, how does it affect poor people? They tried to do it by rich people, middle-aged, older, middle-income, gender, amount of alcohol. But see, it was the MRI and the fMRI that was the key. Because those two tools, an MRI shows... the organ, right? So you could see the brain.

You could measure the size of the brain relative to the size of the skull. The fMRI shows activity in that same area. So you can see the activity as well as the actual tissue itself in three dimension. So understand what I'm saying. They measured people's... the bony part of their brain, right? The circumference of their skull.

And then they measured... the size of the brain and tried to figure out is do people who drink and drink heavily and moderately do they have a change in the actual gray matter and the white matter in the brains so they're trying to figure out does this actually change your brain size now I treat people who have alcohol use disorder on a daily basis and I can tell you people who drink alcohol, and then get into recovery, it's really quite interesting, the change in the functioning.

Now, there were areas of the brain that were affected, and the corpus callosum, which is the connective tissue between the two lobes of the brain, so you got a left and right hemisphere, right? And people talk about that all the time, about the left and right hemisphere. What's really interesting is that that seems to be affected, with alcohol use disorder. So the brain's not communicating left and right.

So, you know, in layman's terms, oh, right brain, you know, it's more emotional and artistic and left brain is more analytical, which for neuroscience is not totally true. But the things that will affect the brain is the communication between those two.

And, you know, we've done studies on individuals who have had that part of their brain severed through surgical procedures back, we don't do it anymore, but, you know, unless there's some huge, you know, catastrophic reason that it would need to be done. But they don't, but they know that the effect of that is significant. in the brain functioning when you're talking to people who have those problems. And that's one of the areas of the brain that was affected by this.

So the relationship between the left and right lobes is affected because the communication between them is changed because of the size of the gray matter. Now, just to clarify, the gray matter volume and the white matter volume, what does that mean? Well, there's... Gray matter volume is the brain itself, right? So we have this gray matter. And what it is, it's a very fatty organ that is full of neurons.

Those neurons are what hold the information, transmit the information that comes from your body, your personality, your thinking, your cognitive abilities. Everything is there. It's all in that one place, right? Except for we know that there's, you know, the second brain is in the gut and we know that there's neurons there too. But the majority of everything that goes on in the entire body is in the brain.

So when you're taking in alcohol and you're doing it in increasing amounts, you're affecting the gray matter volume in the brain. So they used a regression model to calculate the predicted change in the global gray matter volume and white matter volume associated with increased daily alcohol intake by one unit. The prediction is similar when using different sets of control variables, and then they excluded individuals who did not consume alcohol or those who consume a high level of alcohol.

So what they did was they looked at, you know, if you go from zero to one daily unit, the results in reduction grew by 0.0300. percent in the global gray matter volume and 0.02 in the white matter volume. And it estimated on a full sample and the model that excluded individuals who consume a high level of alcohol yields negative associations with similar magnitude. So it was, they took out, you know, because a high volume you had more of a change. and less of a change. So they threw that out.

So the findings through all of this, and it's quite a long, and I'll tell you where you can find this article, but this journal article is researched as it was presented in nature.com website. So what they came up with was as a conclusion that, let me get to it here. global IDPs, quantify. So the conclusion was that they found that there was a significant change in that, and the more you drank, the more there was a change.

And so the global change in the gray matter volume and the white matter volume at the microstructure analysis level was that it was there, and it's high. So I've always wondered myself... Why is it that I can't reason and rationalize with somebody who is an alcoholic and is drinking daily to black out or just drinking heavily? You cannot rationalize what you're trying to say to them. You can't appeal to the rational thinking.

They get very emotional, they're very unstable in how they interpret information, and you cannot get them and move them into the phase of recovery that seems logical that you would need to do. And I've had individuals who are highly intelligent, very well educated at the doctoral level, scientists, I've had doctors and medical professionals that you can't... They know the science.

They know the reason for the science, but you can't rationally converse with them about the problems of drinking and what it's doing. They know what it's doing. People who are highly educated, you would think that somebody who is highly educated, you'd be able to appeal to their intellect at least to get them to see what they're doing, but they become very oppositional and defiant. There's a certain behavior pattern that you see with people who have alcohol use disorder.

Their behaviors are erratic, their thinking is convoluted and clouded, and their judgment is impaired in a way that, because their brain is impaired. And now, with this study that was, because it was all based on MRIs and fMRIs, so it was the measuring of the brain, we have the proof that when you drink, what happens is it affects the structure of the brain and turns it into an issue of we don't have the ability to think because the neurons aren't there.

And so that old adage I used to hear when I was a kid, you know, if you drink, you're going to kill your brain cells. And in fact, you do actually kill your brain cells. We always kind of joke about it. The difference is that some of that can be reversed, and we didn't know that then. back in the 60s and 70s and into the 80s. You know, if you drank, you were killing your brain cells and you never get them back. Well, that turns out to be not so true.

But it does also affect the way that your brain functions, which affects the way you think, your decision making. So, if you are listening to this, and you are, if you're dealing with alcohol use disorder, And the same is true with drugs, but I don't have that study to look at right now. I'm just looking at alcohol use. But if you have those issues and you're wondering what to do or you're wondering why you should do anything, you need to do it because if you don't, you have a brain problem.

that's betraying you, right? It's, it's, it's betraying you. You think that you have it going on. You think that you are, you know, that's, that was my story when I was drinking heavily. It was like, no, you can't tell me what to do. Um, I know exactly what to do. I'm, I'm the smartest guy in the room.

And I have that confrontation all the time with, with my clients until they, stop drinking long enough for their brain to start to repair so if as I was explaining to somebody earlier today if you really want to know like what are you supposed to do when you have um you know you have an addiction issue and this this particular gentleman had both drugs and alcohol but it's true with alcohol too what why do I need to go to rehab you know can I just stop using my drug of choice yeah you certainly

can but your brain is impaired and so the chemical in your body is starting to affect your brain you can't even you don't even know what to do so if somebody comes into my office and they say hey I want to stop drinking I need some help you know what am I supposed to do so I give them instructions the very first thing they do is say, I'm not going to follow your instructions. And then I say, well, you know, your thinking is impaired. And they say, no, no, that's not true.

And they start arguing with me on that point. And I say, okay, well then, can you tell me why you're having so many problems socially or at work or whatever? And they think it's because they drink too much. It's not because they drink at all. It's because they drink too much and they want to come in and they want to try to somehow get to where they have one drink. I've had people come in. It happens pretty regularly.

One person will come in and say they're seeking help, and it's usually because somebody is telling them they have to come in. They come in, they sit down, and then I tell them, look, you're an alcoholic. You're not going to be able to drink again. They don't want to hear that, and they will discontinue saying, I want to go seek professional help with somebody that will tell me that I can have one drink. And I'm like, okay, well, good luck to you because I'm not that person.

And That right there, that is clouded, distorted thinking caused by alcohol use disorder and the opposition and the decision making and that is smack dab in that frontal cortex area where they think that they have the answer, they know the answer, but it's kind of like why are you seeking help then? So does it affect the brain? It affects the brain in the functioning capacity because you have an impaired brain because you have gray matter and white matter destruction going on.

Going to rehab is a physical barrier between you and your drug of choice, hopefully to get your brain to heal at least a little bit so you can start to think a little more clearly in your decision making, enough to follow other people's instructions who know how to help you get into sobriety.

So if you are listening to this, and I know I threw a bunch of stuff at you, but if you're listening to this and you want help, understand that step one, this addiction is more powerful than I am because the enemy has attacked your brain and turned it into a bit of a mess because the gray matter is being destroyed slowly. Now, what can you do about it? Seek help and listen to those who are trying to help you. Follow their instructions, even if you don't want to. And that's how that works.

So, if you want to look this article up, you can find it at nature.com And it's titled Associations Between Alcohol Consumption and Gray and White Matter Volumes in the UK Biobank. It was published in March of 2022. You may have seen something in the news about it. It took a while for the news to pick up on it, but you should look it up. Read it. It's a science article, and it's a Clinical Journal article, so it's a little bit dry. It goes into hard science.

And if that's not your thing, sorry, but it's there. So I think you should take a look at it if you do have some questions about it. It's clear. Alcohol intake is negatively associated with global brain volume measures. Both white and gray matter. Period. Period. So is it affecting your brain? Yes. Thus, it's affecting your thinking and your personality. And guess what? The enemy wins. It's that simple. The enemy wins. You used something that is killing the part of you that makes decisions.

How horrific is that? Well, I hope you've appreciated and enjoyed this particular episode of Doc Jock, Your Addiction Lifeguard. And as always, if you need help in your recovery, please, you can reach out to me. If you want to, through my website, wellspringmindbody.com, or you can give me a call at the phone number listed on that website. I'll be more than happy to talk to you. If you have a suggestion for a topic of an episode, please reach out to me and let me know.

I'd be more than happy to talk about it. If you'd like to be on the show, you can certainly reach out to me. And we can have a conversation about recovery and addiction and all the fun stuff associated with getting sane, stable, and sober. So until next time, I want to thank you for listening to Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard. And I'll catch you on the next episode. See ya.