Boozy Britain // Current

Street Dares - New Anti-Binge Drinking Campaign

Here's a sneak peak at the new anti-binge-drinking campaign video from the Home... more

mattbrawn
added this
5 months ago
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5 comments

Welcome to binge Britain: Polish photographer documents four years of drunken revelry in Cardiff

A Polish photographer has spent the last four years documenting Cardiff's wild weekend... more

jennyschu
added this
6 months ago
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4 comments

40,000 Brits killed a year by booze - 5 TIMES official figure

Leading experts have said that as many as 40,000 drinkers are dying every year because... more

burukku16
added this
7 months ago
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5 comments

A reason why you love that G+T so much!

What did your mother drink before you arrived? Do you have similar tastes!

viognier
added this
8 months ago
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5 comments

Hangover free whiskey?

An Aussie drinks company says it has created a hangover-free whiskey. Its "Naked Scot"... more

abbym0308
added this
9 months ago
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3 comments

Kebabs are bad for you... 'Shockingly' bad.

It's no shocker that doner kebabs are not health food. (Really, is anything that you... more

abbym0308
added this
10 months ago
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4 comments

One third of Brits drink over daily limit

Figures from the Office for National Statistics have revealed that more than a third... more

ClareW
added this
10 months ago
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6 comments

Doner kebab creator dies

A sad day for British cuisine. Mahmut Aygün, snack visionary and talented meat... more

abbym0308
added this
10 months ago
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17 comments

Britons now world's biggest wine drinkers

Britain has overtaken Germany to become the world's biggest wine importer, according... more

steadmani
added this
10 months ago
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7 comments

Aggressive drunks: it's in their genes

A faulty gene might be the cause for some people to become aggressive when they're... more

abbym0308
added this
11 months ago
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21 comments

Beer is cheaper than water in UK supermarkets

Own-brand cans of lager sell for as little as 23p in Britain's supermarkets, according... more

abbym0308
added this
12 months ago
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14 comments

School children get beer goggles

"Beer goggles" which mimic the effects of drunkenness will be used in schools and... more

sallyf
added this
12 months ago
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16 comments

Calorie warning labels aim to curb binge drinking

"A pint of lager = 2.3 units = 170 calories = a sausage roll." If this was printed... more

abbym0308
added this
12 months ago
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10 comments

Church and police to end binge drinking

In a drastic move, church and police join forces in Wales in an attempt to stem rising... more

sallyf
added this
12 months ago
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5 comments

Longest ever pub crawl reaches 14,000th pub

Now that's dedication to drinking! 24 years and 84,000 pints of real ale later, a team... more

abbym0308
added this
1 year ago
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6 comments

Excess drinking shrinks the brain

The more alcohol you drink, the more your brain shrinks, a new study has found.

"The take-home message is that, if you drink a lot, you're going to hurt your brain," said Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. "This is something we knew, but this is a huge study that quantifies that."

"It's not surprising that alcohol would cause shrinkage of the brain. That kind of thing has been observed in animal models and smaller studies," Miranda added. "The surprising thing is that they [the study authors] showed that even low levels of drinking are not protective, as people had seen in other cases."

The findings are published in the October issue of theArchives of Neurology.

Brain volume decreases naturally as people age, at a rate of about 1.9 percent per decade. At the same time, the brain acquires white matter lesions as it gets older. Both of these changes also accompany dementia and cognitive decline, according to background information in the study.

Moderate levels of alcohol consumption have been linked with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, leading researchers to hypothesize that restrained tippling might also slow declines in brain volume. Previous studies have also found that drinking alcohol in moderation is associated with improved cognitive function and a decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

For the new study, led by Carol Ann Paul, of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, researchers conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and health exams on 1,839 adults (average age 60) participating in the Framingham Offspring Study between 1999 and 2001. None of the participants had evidence of clinical dementia or had suffered a stroke.

The men and women were asked how much alcohol they drank each week, then were classified as abstainers, former drinkers, or low (one to seven drinks per week), moderate (eight to 14 drinks per week) or high consumers of alcohol (more than 14 drinks a week).

Most participants (almost 38 percent of men and more than 44 percent of women) fell into the "low-consumption" category. Men were more likely than women to report being moderate or heavy drinkers.

Alcohol had no protective affect on the normal, age-related shrinkage in brain volume, the researchers found.

To the contrary, the more a person drank, the more their brain volume diminished. This relationship was somewhat more pronounced in women, although women tended to be lighter drinkers.

The gender difference could be explained by biological factors, namely that alcohol is absorbed faster in women and they tend to feel the effects of alcohol more than men, the researchers said. The more alcohol you drink, the more your brain shrinks, a new study has found.... more