Alcohol affects the brain even weeks after quitting: study

There is a reason why alcohol has such a bad reputation. The effects of alcohol on the body are long lasting and according to a new study, the effects of alcohol persist even after weeks of quitting it.
So if you’re planning on quitting alcohol thinking it might be cleansing you from the word, this might not be something that would make you happy.
The adverse effects of alcohol on the brain are well known. However, researchers have observed structural changes that very heterogeneous. The researchers from the Central Institute of Mental Health of Mannheim in Germany said that the diagnostic markers lack in being able to characterize brain damage induced by alcohol, especially at the beginning of abstinence, which is a critical period due to the high rate of relapse it has. The researchers have now detected how the damage in the brain continues during the first weeks of abstinence, although the consumption of alcohol ceases. by means of magnetic resonance.

The entire research was published in the journal, JAMA Psychiatry. The study found that even after six weeks of stopping alcohol consumption, there are still changes in the matter of the brain. "Until now, nobody could believe that in the absence of alcohol the damage in the brain would progress," said Santiago Canals, of the Institute of Neurosciences in Spain. 90 patients who had an average age of 46 years that participated in the study were hospitalized because of alcohol use disorder. To compare the brain magnetic resonances of these patients, a control group without alcohol problems was used, consisting of 36 men with an average age of 41 years.
"An important aspect of the work is that the group of patients participating in our research is hospitalised in a detoxification programme, and their consumption of addictive substances is controlled, which guarantees that they are not drinking any alcohol. "Therefore, the abstinence phase can be followed closely," said Canals.

values immediately after abandoning the consumption of alcohol.
This study is one of the only studies that has been carried out in parallel in a rat model with a preference for alcohol, which allows monitoring the transition from normal to alcohol dependence in the brain, a process that is not possible to see in humans, said first author Silvia de Santis.