A drop of alcohol kills a rat

Small doses of alcohol suppress neurogenesis in the brain

Kirill Stasevich, "Kompyulenta"It is believed that a daily couple of glasses of wine helps prevent some cardiovascular diseases and improves brain function.

According to some reports, red wine contains substances that slow down aging and increase life expectancy. It is also known that alcohol before meals stimulates appetite and digestion. In a word, if the harm from heavy alcoholism is beyond anyone's doubt, then ordinary people think about moderate "drunkenness" exactly the opposite: alcohol in small doses is useful in any quantities.

But, according to researchers from Rutgers University (USA), even small doses of alcohol can cause significant harm.

For two weeks, the researchers maintained the alcohol level in rats at 0.08%; with such a blood alcohol content in the United States and some other countries, for example, you can drive a car. This does not mean that the animals had such a level all the time, we are talking about the average value, and the real concentration of alcohol in the blood could be lower (for example, during sleep) or higher. We can say that this model accurately reproduced the situation when a person drinks a little after work to relax, or takes a little before lunch.

As the authors of the work write in an article published in the journal of Neuroscience, and small doses of alcohol can be very harmful (Anderson et al., Moderate drinking? Alcohol consumption significantly decreases neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus).

It is known that even in adult mammals, nerve cells are formed in the brain, and one of the centers of such neurogenesis is the hippocampus, the area responsible for memory. So, by the end of the experiments, the drinking rats had 40% fewer new nerve cells than the sober animals.

This did not affect the behavior and well-being of the rats in any way: the animals were fine with coordination of movements and learning ability. That is, in the short term, there seems to be no harm from moderate drinking. But in the future it may happen that your memory suddenly deteriorates noticeably, and you will not be able to remember even the simplest things. This will happen due to the fact that the hippocampus will not be able to provide the necessary number of new nerve cells, and the plasticity of neural circuits will drop significantly.

In a word, before enthusiastically "treating" yourself with red wine for future cardiovascular problems or warming up your appetite with a portion of something stronger, ask yourself if you are ready to pay for it with your own memory.

Prepared by Rutgers University: Rutgers Researchers Say Daily Drinking Can Be Risky.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.10.2012