The heavy consumption of alcohol in a short time has consequences on the brain, even if you only indulge once in a while.
- According to the French observatory for drugs and drug addiction, 44% of 17-year-olds have already practiced binge-drinking.
- Alcohol is the second leading cause of death in France, after tobacco.
- The adolescent brain is immature, which makes it more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol.
This year, there will finally be no curfew for the evening of December 31, which should not make us forget the dangerous effects of alcohol. They are particularly important during binge-drinking: that is to say when alcohol is drunk in large quantities (at least 70 g of pure ethanol) over a short period (less than two hours).
disturbed sleep
An evening of binge-drinking can have dramatic consequences: drunken driving, violence or even unprotected sex. But it can also disrupt sleep. In 2018, a team of American scientists took an interest in the short-term effects of this mode of alcoholization by conducting a study on mice. They put them through four-hour binge-drinking sessions, while analyzing their sleep. From the first session, the functioning of the gene responsible for regulating sleep was disturbed and the mice slept less. “If you consume alcohol in excess and very quickly, the next day you will feel sleep deprived and you will need to drink even more alcohol to fall asleep.“, explained Mahesh Thakkar, one of the authors of the research.
When the brain clinks
When binge-drinking is repeated over time, it is no longer just the liver that is in danger. Several scientific studies have shown that this practice is harmful to the brain. Scientists from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne have observed this by carrying out memorization tests with different groups of young people, whether or not they are followers of this mode of consumption.
“Heavy drinking behavior affects episodic verbal memory storage and recall processesthey conclude. School failure described in occasional drinkers may be partly linked to this adverse effect.” Other work has shown that binge-drinking causes losses in the density of white matter, whose role is to connect the different regions of the brain to transmit messages between nerve cells. The gray matter of the brain, whose are part of the neurons, is also damaged by binge-drinking.
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