Happy New Year! Now Read Our Article on Alcohol-Causing Brain Damage

It's New Year's Eve, time to celebrate. Woo Hoo!

But before you do, here is some data that may just sober you up before you pour your first drink. From the Los Angeles Times:

In addition to claiming lives, marriages, homes and careers, alcoholism has a greedy way of robbing its victims of brainpower, as well. Over time, alcohol dependence literally shrinks the brain and several of its components. And in so doing, it erodes an alcoholic's ability to learn new tasks, remember things and organize for action. Even regular, heavy drinking can take a cognitive toll, researchers have found.

And don't get us started on the statistics for drunk driving, liver damage, etc., and for women it's even worse. Alcohol also may alter a woman's natural estrogen levels, which can influence her risk for a number of health concerns. From the WSJ:

One of the most troubling effects of alcohol is that even small amounts increase a woman's risk for breast cancer. A pooled analysis by Harvard researchers of all the data on alcohol and breast cancer shows that a woman's risk increases by about 9% for every 10 grams of alcohol a day that she drinks. In the U.S., the typical serving of 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of liquor delivers about 12 grams to 14 grams of alcohol, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

That means a woman who consumes just two drinks a day has about a 27% higher risk of getting breast cancer than a woman who doesn't drink alcohol.

However, since it is the last day of the year, we don't want to be a complete bummer and will offer some good news. If you have drunk too much in the past and experienced the "morphological, metabolic, and functional brain damage" that is associated with heavy drinking, all may not be lost--if you act quickly and decisively that is.

A new study published in the journal Brain states that the brain has a "remarkable ability...to regenerate itself and regain function when its host chooses the path of sobriety." In other words, if you quit drinking now your brain might just fix itself over the next 1/2 year. If you don't quit now, however, you risk even further damage that might be much harder (or impossible) to reverse. That is because the longer a drinker's experience with alcoholism the more modest the gains in regaining brain functionality they are able to make in recovery. Research is showing that at some point the brain loses the ability to heal itself leaving the individual facing lifelong problems with short-term memory, higher-order reasoning, planning and prioritization, not-to-mention a whole slew of physical problems.

One more thing. Smoking tobacco during recovery can "significantly hamper the brain's process of self-repair."

Now go have fun.

Happy New Year!