In the journal The Lancet Public Health recently published the results of a large-scale study, whose goal was to find out the effect of alcohol on the human body. The main conclusion can be called quite expected - the abuse of alcoholic beverages is one of the main factors for the appearance of dementia, all of its types. This is especially true for the early form of dementia.
According to the authors, their research is the largest among all works on studying the influence of alcohol on the human body. During the implementation of the project, scientists analyzed the medical data of people with different forms of dementia. The sampling of data is several tens of thousands of people, both with symptoms of dementia, and without them.
As it turned out, out of 57 000 cases of early dementia (up to 65 years), the main factor that led to the onset of the disease became alcohol abuse, which was observed in 57% of cases of early form of dementia. According to experts from the World Health Organization, 60 grams of pure alcohol for men and 40 grams for women are considered to be a misuse.
Scientists who participated in the project believe that one way to reduce the likelihood of dementia is to reduce the consumption of alcoholic beverages. "The results of our work clearly show that there is a close connection between dementia and chronic alcohol abuse. Therefore, the treatment of alcoholism is a reliable way of preventing dementia, "the specialists say.
Alcoholic drinks lead to deterioration of the human brain, and it becomes more susceptible to the appearance of various diseases. The latter, associated with alcoholism, reduce the life expectancy of people on average by 20 years. And dementia is one of the most common diseases that lead to death in a large number of cases.
By the way, if you take the global statistics of the disease, then most of the dementia appears in women. But early dementia is the lot of men. According to statistics, in the same USA this type of dementia most often affects men (64.9% of all cases).
But not only alcohol is one of the risk factors. These include smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes of different types, low level of education, depression, etc.
"As an expert, I often come across cases of early dementia, aggravated by the patient's abuse of alcoholic beverages. I believe that treatment for alcoholism and simply stopping regular consumption of alcohol is the best way to prevent dementia, "one of the study participants stated.
In this work, scientists studied the state of white matter in the brain. It is a component of the central nervous system, which consists mainly of axon bundles, which are covered with myelin. The axons themselves are specialized processes of the nerve cell that transmit nerve impulses to the tissues of various organs or to other neurons. So, scientists were able to determine that the lack of physical activity is closely related to the deterioration of the white matter. And it, in turn, affects the ability of the brain to perform various functions.
It remains unclear how actively you need to play sports or remain physically active in order to avoid the onset of Alzheimer's disease or at least reduce the likelihood of this disease. If the symptoms have already appeared - is it possible, while doing sports, to stop or at least reduce the rate of onset of the disease? These questions remain unanswered, but another team of scientists from the O'Donnell Brain Institute is working on finding out all this within the five-year study of Risk Reduction for Alzheimer's Disease (rrAD), which covered six medical centers in the United States.
