Pick Your Poison?
Even one drink can have an impact on your cognitive and impaired memory. Alcohol is neurotoxic, meaning it is poison to your brain and damages brain cells, so its short-term and long-term effects can be dangerous.
Blackouts (no memory of events during intoxication, not passing out) occur when your body’s alcohol levels are high. Alcohol impairs your ability to form new memories while intoxicated, so you will likely never remember the events forgotten.
Studies that show that chronic alcohol use lead to brain damage, both gray and white matter. It can cause brain atrophy and shrink your brain over time. By the way, you might be surprised to learn that the NIAAA defines heavy drinking as follows:
- For men, consuming five or more drinks on any day or 15 or more per week
- For women, consuming four or more on any day or eight or more drinks per week
Alcohol affects short-term memory by slowing down how nerves communicate with each other in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus plays a significant role in helping people form and maintain memories. When normal nerve activity slows down, short-term memory loss can occur.
Because alcohol causes damage to the brain it can lead to dementia and can increase the chances of developing dementia. It can also increase strokes, which can also cause dementia.”
In addition to dementia, long-term alcohol use can lead to other memory disorders like Korsakoff syndrome or Wernicke’s encephalopathy, which causes confusion, memory problems, gait issues, eye movement problems and mood symptoms. The good news is if you stop drinking, improve your nutrition and replace your thiamine, it can be reversible.
Most people want to improve their memory or at least keep it intact. So, next time you reach for that glass to “take the edge off” think about what edge you’re really taking off!