The brain suffers durably from the express bites of which young people are more and more adept. Its structure and functions are altered.
Young people who were planning to put their heads upside down when entering the new year would do well to reconsider their plans. The express biture doesn’t just attack the liver. It also affects the brain in depth. A study conducted in France (University of Reims-Champagne-Ardenne) and the United Kingdom (University of Sussex), published in Addiction Biology, demonstrates the devastating impact of this behavior on white matter.
Decline in performance
40 students (18-25 years old) took part in this research. Half of them never binge-drinked during the follow-up year. The other half got heavily drunk over several evenings. The objective of the work was to determine the impact of this difference in alcohol consumption on the brain. To do this, the volunteers completed questionnaires, had MRIs and cognitive tests twice, at the start of the study and at its end, a year later.
The results reveal strong disparities with the express biture. Young men are clearly disadvantaged. They show more loss of white matter density, which connects the different regions of the brain and transmits messages between nerve cells. This results in less neural connectivity.
On cognitive tests, the effect of binge drinking is observed by a reduced working memory – which makes it possible to retain the information necessary for reading and searching for information, but also for reasoning – as well as poorer learning and comprehension abilities. Young men affected also tend to use more drugs.
Common practice in France
Young girls, on the other hand, do not lose white matter when they drink heavily. This difference could be explained by an earlier maturation of their brain. In them, the alterations are manifested at the level of the gray matter, which contains the neuronal cells and processes the information coming in particular from the sensory organs.
These results are all the more worrying as express biture is commonplace in France. Among the 18-25 year olds surveyed as part of the Health Barometer – conducted by the National Institute for Prevention and Health Education (Inpes) –, half have already experienced “significant occasional alcohol consumption” in the year or an intoxication. Nearly a third admit to being drunk on a regular basis… a statistic that is on the rise among young women and which remains stable among young men.
Our best wishes for this new year… And above all #health!!
Posted by whydoctor on Thursday, December 31, 2015
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