People With Alcohol Use Disorder Can Help Brain Repair Damage by Skipping Liquor for 7 Months [Study]

Alcohol can affect our brains, but individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) can still repair the damages by avoiding liquor for seven months. This announcement is great news for people recovering from AUD.

Skipping Alcohol on Individuals With AUD

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) sufferers frequently have thinning in the cortex, the wrinkly outer layer of the brain essential for a wide range of higher-order cognitive tasks. According to a US study, those who stop drinking see a gradual increase in cortical thickness, starting more quickly in the first month and continuing for 7.3 months until their thickness catches up to that of people without AUD. It remains unknown how much or how quickly recovery happens when someone stops drinking, despite prior research suggesting that certain regions may recover.

The team, headed by behavioral scientist and psychiatrist Timothy Durazzo of Stanford University, notes that the first month of sobriety is the only time brain thickness alterations have been the subject of longitudinal studies. But it's unclear how much local cortical thickness recovers after prolonged abstinence (more than six months, for example).

The individuals' brains were examined using a kind of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that is especially helpful for obtaining clear images of the body's internal structure. The researchers measured the cortical thickness of 34 locations and averaged the results between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

After abstaining from alcohol for 7.3 months, there was a significant recovery of thickness in those with AUD. In 25 of the 34 regions, it was deemed statistically significant, and 24 were deemed to have thicknesses that were statistically equivalent to controls.

AUD individuals showed a faster thickness change rate from one week to one month after quitting than from one month to 7.3 months in all 34 brain regions that Durazzo and his team examined.

In several regions of the brain, cortical thickening occurred more slowly in AUD patients who also had high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Those with AUD who were current smokers experienced the same thing.

Cortical thickness alterations were not significantly correlated with psychiatric problems, prior cigarette smoking, or current substance usage (including drugs other than alcohol). Thus, giving up smoking may also aid in the cortical thickness's recuperation.

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Alcohol and Brain

Alcohol can change how the brain functions by interfering with its communication channels. Alcohol impairs the functions of the brain regions in charge of speech, memory, balance, and judgment, increasing the risk of accidents and other unfavorable outcomes.

Chronic heavy drinking results in changes to the neurons, including shrinkage. A few important subjects on alcohol and the brain are included below.

Alcohol abuse can result in blackouts brought on by alcohol. A person has blackouts, which are lapses in recall of things that happened when they were drunk. These gaps occur when an individual consumes enough alcohol to impair memory consolidation momentarily----the process by which information moves from short-term to long-term storage in the brain's hippocampal region.

An alcohol overdose can occur when drinking is continued in the face of apparent indicators of severe impairments. When there is an excessive amount of alcohol in the blood, parts of the brain that regulate vital life-support processes like breathing, heart rate, and temperature regulation start to malfunction.