Alcohol and Dementia (E246)

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Many of us worry that we’ve done permanent damage to our brains with our heavy drinking or that it’s been too long to make a change. In this episode you’ll learn more about dementia, how heavy drinking damages the brain and increases the risk of developing dementia, and what you can do to reduce your risk of dementia, besides quitting drinking of course. I will also discuss wet brain, also known as Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, which is another consequence of long term heavy drinking. 

What to listen to next:

E196: how the brain recovers after quitting drinking

E224: alcohol makes your brain stop working

E240: post-acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS)

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Cite:

Gillian Tietz. Alcohol and Dementia (E246). Sober Powered. 2024

Please respect my intellectual property and properly credit me if you share my work.

Sources

1. Sabia, S. Alcohol consumption and risk of dementia: 23 year follow-up of Whitehall II cohort study. BMJ. 2018

2. American Academy of Neurology. "Drinking Heavy Amounts Of Alcohol Shrinks Your Brain." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 May 2007

3. Rao T. Alcohol and your brain: study finds even moderate drinking is damaging. The Conversation. 2020. 

4. Immonen, S., Launes, J., Järvinen, I. et al. Moderate alcohol use is associated with decreased brain volume in early middle age in both sexes. Sci Rep 10, 13998 (2020). 

5. Baranger DAA, Demers CH, Elsayed NM, et al. Convergent Evidence for Predispositional Effects of Brain Gray Matter Volume on Alcohol Consumption. Biological Psychiatry. 2020;87(7):645-655. 

6. Alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD): what is it and who gets it? Alzheimer’s Society. 2021. 

7. Daviet, R., Aydogan, G., Jagannathan, K. et al. Associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes in the UK Biobank. Nat Commun. 2022