The Common Drink Linked To Alzheimer’s Disease

 Well shit, I'm using alcohol to vastly increase my social connections to prevent dementia! This miniscule chance will not change my behavior!  I don't binge drink, so there!

The Common Drink Linked To Alzheimer’s Disease

The drink made genetic changes to microglial cells, degrading their functioning.

Alcohol may slow down the brain’s ability to clear waste, possibly leading to Alzheimer’s.

The study on rat cells found that alcohol made genetic changes to microglial cells, degrading their functioning.

The amount of alcohol used was equivalent to a session of binge drinking in humans.

The microglia are cells in the brain that help regulate normal functioning.

When these cells stop working properly, the brain begins to degrade.

The link between alcohol and Alzheimer’s disease has been controversial.

Some studies have suggested low alcohol intake may have a protective effect.

However, recently researchers have identified a link between alcohol and brain inflammation.

Research has revealed that alcohol might hinder phagocytosis: the process by which proteins linked to Alzheimer’s are cleared from the brain.

Professor Douglas Feinstein, who led the study, said:

“Among the genes we saw altered were many involved in phagocytosis, which is the first time this has been shown.

While these studies were performed in isolated cells, our results suggest that alcohol impedes the ability of microglia to keep the brain clear of amyloid beta and may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

The results showed that phagocytosis was suppressed by around 15 percent one hour after alcohol exposure.

Professor Feinstein said:

“We didn’t continue the study to see whether phagocytosis was further impaired after longer exposures to alcohol, but it appears that these changes in microglial cells could be a contributing factor to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Another study has found that low doses of alcohol may help clear the brain of waste.

The previous study gave varying amounts of alcohol to mice and looked at the effect on their brains.

However, those given high levels of alcohol over a long period showed increasing levels of damaging inflammation.

The study was published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation (Kalinin et al., 2018).

Binge alcohol alters exercise-driven neuroplasticity

My takeaway from this is not to binge because there are so many positives of alcohol. Don't listen to me, I have no medical background.
I bet your doctor reflexively tells you not to drink alcohol. Up to your discretion.

Alcohol for these 12 reasons.

A little daily alcohol may cut stroke risk

An occasional drink doesn't hurt coronary arteries

Negative here:

 Binge alcohol alters exercise-driven neuroplasticity

• Emily A. Barton^{a, ,} ,
• Yanbin Lu^b, ,
• Murad Megjhani^b, ,
• Mark E. Maynard^a, ,
• Prathamesh M. Kulkarni^b, ,
• Badrinath Roysam^b, ,
• J. Leigh Leasure^{a, c,}

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.11.041

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Highlights

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Binge alcohol exerts a prolonged influence on cortical microglia morphology.

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Exercise increases cortical microglia.

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Binge alcohol suppresses this exercise-driven increase in microglia.

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Abstract

Exercise is increasingly being used as a treatment for alcohol use disorders (AUD), but the interactive effects of alcohol and exercise on the brain remain largely unexplored. Alcohol damages the brain, in part by altering glial functioning. In contrast, exercise promotes glial health and plasticity. In the present study, we investigated whether binge alcohol would attenuate the effects of subsequent exercise on glia. We focused on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), an alcohol-vulnerable region that also undergoes neuroplastic changes in response to exercise. Adult female Long-Evans rats were gavaged with ethanol (25% w/v) every 8 h for 4 days. Control animals received an isocaloric, non-alcohol diet. After 7 days of abstinence, rats remained sedentary or exercised for 4 weeks. Immunofluorescence was then used to label microglia, astrocytes, and neurons in serial tissue sections through the mPFC. Confocal microscope images were processed using FARSIGHT, a computational image analysis toolkit capable of automated analysis of cell number and morphology. We found that exercise increased the number of microglia in the mPFC in control animals. Binged animals that exercised, however, had significantly fewer microglia. Furthermore, computational arbor analytics revealed that the binged animals (regardless of exercise) had microglia with thicker, shorter arbors and significantly less branching, suggestive of partial activation. We found no changes in the number or morphology of mPFC astrocytes. We conclude that binge alcohol exerts a prolonged effect on morphology of mPFC microglia and limits the capacity of exercise to increase their numbers.

Binge Drinking and Hypertension on Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in Korean Men and Women

I can't even imagine how you manage to put down 12 drinks at one time. If your are hypertensive don't do this.
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/41/10/2157.short

Abstract

Background and Purpose—The purpose of this study was to examine combined effects of hypertension and binge drinking on the risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease in Koreans.

Methods—This study followed a cohort of 6100 residents in Kangwha County, aged ≥55 years as of March 1985, for cardiovascular mortality for 20.8 years up to December 31, 2005. We calculated hazard ratios (HRs) for cardiovascular mortality by blood pressure and binge drinking habits using the Cox proportional hazard model. Binge drinkers and heavy binge drinkers were defined as having ≥6 drinks on 1 occasion and ≥12 drinks on 1 occasion.

Results—After adjusting for total alcohol consumption, male heavy binge drinkers with Grade 3 hypertension had a 12-fold increased risk of cardiovascular mortality (HR, 12.7; 95% CI, 3.47 to 46.5), whereas male binge drinkers with Grade 3 hypertension had a 4-fold increased risk of cardiovascular mortality (HR, 4.41; 95% CI, 1.38 to 14.1) when compared with nondrinkers with normal blood pressure. However, in considering separate effects of heavy binge drinking and hypertension on the risk of cardiovascular mortality, HRs were rather low (HR of heavy binge drinkers, 1.88, 1.10 to 3.20; HR of hypertensives, 2.00, 1.70 to 2.35) compared with nondrinkers with normal blood pressure.

Conclusions—Binge drinkers and heavy binge drinkers with Grade 3 hypertension showed a marked increase in cardiovascular mortality risk. Even after adjusting for total alcohol consumption, the former revealed 4.41 and the latter indicated 12.7 of HR for the risk of cardiovascular mortality.