Party Time

Not blowing smoke: Research finds medical marijuana lowers prescription drug use

Researchers pinpoint neurons that tell the brain when to stop drinking

Research demonstrates link between gut bacteria and brain inflammation in chronic liver disease

Treating alcoholics - with wine

Same as it ever was

Sober is the new drunk: why millennials are ditching bar crawls for juice crawls 

Because their metabolisms are already too fucked up by pharmaceuticals for actual alcohol?
Because fructose and various spices have pretty much the same metabolic effect as alcohol?
Because they believe it's healthy and like to feel self-righteous?
Because doctors suck???

Reverse Psychology

Alcohol a 'very alarming' problem for nation's lawyers, study finds

The rate of problem drinking is roughly three times higher in the U.S. among lawyers than the adult population as a whole, said attorney and clinician Patrick R. Krill, Hazelden's architect of the project and the study's lead author. Lawyers also have alcohol problems at a rate higher than doctors and other professions.
Narrowing the focus strictly to the quantity and frequency of drinking, the study saw that more than a third of lawyers exhibit trouble with alcohol.
Krill added that "we found rates of depression are also significantly higher than the general population," while lawyers also were coping with anxiety at a higher rate than the country as a whole.

ABA President Paulette Brown said, "This new research demonstrates how the pressures felt by many lawyers manifest in health risks."

Ummmm, no.    Read your data.   Those people were drinking at the beginning. 
What it more likely demonstrates is that people who self medicate their infections with alcohol become anxious and obsessed with learning Rules, and following Rules, and enforcing Rules.  And then doubling down on drinking when the Rules don't seem to work.

It's a self-selecting population.   Rule worship is an Alcoholic behavior.

Reality Based Intoxication

Want to reduce obesity? Legalize medical marijuana, researchers say

....But for younger adults, age 18 to 24, the study found a different dynamic at play. "Our findings show that the enactment of Medical Marijuana Law is associated with a 3.1 percent reduction in the probability of alcohol consumption and a 4.8 percent reduction in the probability of binge drinking" among this younger group, the researchers found. They posit that medical marijuana availability may lead some younger adults to "substitute away from highly caloric alcoholic beverages toward a lower-calorie marijuana 'high,' resulting in lower body weight and likelihood of obesity."
This so-called substitution effect is often cited in arguments for legalizing marijuana: If you legalize weed, some people will opt for pot over alcohol. Alcohol consumption will fall as a result. And since researchers agree that marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol, the net effect of such a change for individuals and society would be positive.

They don't even mention the fact that it heals intestinal epithelium and reduces insulin resistance.   That seems relevant somehow.

Heh

Ladies, you might want to swap the bourbon for a bong 

Alcohol increases intestinal permeability.
Weed reduces it.

So yeah, you might...

Problematic Solutions

Really long article on the history of alcoholism treatment.   It's pretty good, but I have chosen a few excerpts that tweaked my brain.

The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous

Nowhere in the field of medicine is treatment less grounded in modern science. A 2012 report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University compared the current state of addiction medicine to general medicine in the early 1900s, when quacks worked alongside graduates of leading medical schools. The American Medical Association estimates that out of nearly 1 million doctors in the United States, only 582 identify themselves as addiction specialists. (The Columbia report notes that there may be additional doctors who have a subspecialty in addiction.) Most treatment providers carry the credential of addiction counselor or substance-abuse counselor, for which many states require little more than a high-school diploma or a GED. Many counselors are in recovery themselves. The report stated: “The vast majority of people in need of addiction treatment do not receive anything that approximates evidence-based care.”

And yet "Rehab" is subsidized by insurance.   Thus it has proliferated like an invasive weed.

Finland’s treatment model is based in large part on the work of an American neuroscientist named John David Sinclair. I met with Sinclair in Helsinki in early July. He was battling late-stage prostate cancer, and his thick white hair was cropped short in preparation for chemotherapy. Sinclair has researched alcohol’s effects on the brain since his days as an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati, where he experimented with rats that had been given alcohol for an extended period. Sinclair expected that after several weeks without booze, the rats would lose their desire for it. Instead, when he gave them alcohol again, they went on week-long benders, drinking far more than they ever had before—more, he says, than any rat had ever been shown to drink.

And abstinence the standard protocol.  Welcome to the Hotel California.

Sinclair came to believe that people develop drinking problems through a chemical process: each time they drink, the endorphins released in the brain strengthen certain synapses. The stronger these synapses grow, the more likely the person is to think about, and eventually crave, alcohol—until almost anything can trigger a thirst for booze, and drinking becomes compulsive.

This is absolutely not how it works.  This is not a reward system problem.  Drinking affects your glucose metabolism, and chronic hypoglycemia causes binge intake behavior.

Just notice that, once again, for all the talk about "illness", nobody ever mentions actual disease processes.
There's a reason we drink-  we are chronically infected, and the gastrointestinal effects of alcohol lessen the likelihood and severity of an acute septic episode.  The medium term benefits have historically exceeded the long term consequences...
Alcohol is the reason most of us are alive.

I will have a lot more to say about the causes and effects and costs and benefits of alcoholism in a future rant.   

Whole Grain Goodness

Preventing Gut Leakiness by Oats Supplementation Ameliorates Alcohol-Induced Liver Damage in Rats

Only 30% of alcoholics develop liver disease (ALD) suggesting that additional factors are needed. Endotoxin is one such factor, but its etiology is unclear. Since the gut is the main source of endotoxin, we sought to determine whether an increase in intestinal permeability (leaky gut) is required for alcohol-induced endotoxemia and liver injury and whether the gut leakiness is preventable. For 10 weeks, rats received by gavage increasing alcohol doses and either oats or chow.  Alcohol caused gut leakiness that was associated with both endotoxemia and liver injury. Oats prevented these changes. We conclude that chronic gavage of alcohol in rats is a simple experimental model that mimics key aspects of ALD, including endotoxemia and liver injury, and can be useful to study possible mechanisms of endotoxemia in ALD. Since preventing the gut leakiness by oats also prevented the endotoxemia and ameliorated liver damage in rat, our results suggest that alcohol-induced gut leakiness 1) may cause alcohol-induced endotoxemia and liver injury and 2) may be the critical cofactor in the 30% of alcoholics who develop ALD. Further studies are needed to determine whether ALD in humans can be prevented by preventing alcohol-induced gut leakiness, studies that should lead to the development of useful therapeutic agents for the prevention of ALD.

Brain Eating Zombie of the Day

Mark Kern

What a Psychologist Specializing in Addiction Treatment Thinks About Drynuary

Moderation Management has always recommended a 30-day abstinence period as part of its program. What was the reasoning behind that?

It’s primarily because we want to reduce the tolerance people have built up over time to alcohol. That’s the first motive. The second motive is to start to get comfortable in your skin again.

I am pretty sure you should understand the metabolic effects of alcohol and the consequences of what you're saying before you recommend it to sick people.
That is exactly the opposite of what happens when you merely abstain without addressing the underlying illness.

Same shit, different day.

Strike that, reverse it.

Workaholics are more likely to drink too much alcohol.

Thanks for the excellent documentation of the obvious, but your conclusion is...  well...  just not even worth moving my eyes from left to right to read it.
Alcohol doesn't relax you, it lowers blood sugar and raises the stress response.
That's why employers used to pay workers with beer.  
It's liquid obsession.

Yo Doctors

CAN YOU HEAR ME SCREAMING?????

Dietary saturated fat reduces alcoholic hepatotoxicity in rats by altering fatty acid metabolism and membrane composition.

As dietary saturated fat content increased, all measures of hepatic pathology and oxidative stress were progressively reduced, including steatosis . Thus, saturated fat protected rats from alcoholic liver disease in a dose-responsive fashion.

The type of dietary fat modulates intestinal tight junction integrity, gut permeability, and hepatic toll-like receptor expression in a mouse model of alcoholic liver disease.

Dietary fat is an important cofactor in alcohol-associated liver injury. We demonstrate that USF (corn oil/linoleic acid) by itself results in dysregulation of intestinal  tight juncion integrity leading to increased gut permeability, and alcohol further exacerbates these alterations.

Seriously, this research stuff is bad for my serenity.
I think I'm going to vomit.

Well Looky There

Everything old is new again...

Alcoholics have an abnormal CD8 T cell response to the influenza virus

Alcoholic patients have greatly increased risks of infection with extracellular bacteria, intracellular bacteria, and viruses. Numerous reports have documented that alcoholics exhibit higher rates of bacterial pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, and peritonitis. Among the best-studied examples of this increased predilection to severe respiratory disease following chronic alcohol abuse are bacterial pneumonias. In fact, Benjamin Rush, the Surgeon General of the Continental Army and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, as early as 1785 described alcoholics as susceptible to yellow fever, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. More recent studies have demonstrated that there is a two- to seven-fold greater incidence in mortality as well as increased morbidity in chronic alcohol-consuming individuals compared to non-alcoholic pneumonia patients."
"It has also been known since the 1800s that alcohol use disorders are associated with increased susceptibility to lung infection – both viral and bacterial, including community acquired pneumonia and tuberculosis – acute respiratory distress syndrome, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease," added Ilhem Messaoudi, associate professor of biomedical sciences at University of California Riverside. "Therefore, understanding the mechanisms underlying the increased susceptibility to lung infection and injury in individuals with alcohol use disorder is extremely important. Although several studies have demonstrated that this phenomenon is in part due to significant perturbations in the immune system, our understanding of the impact of alcohol abuse on immunity remains incomplete."

Gosh, almost all my favorite things in one article.  Drunk Medical History.

Cheaper than a Brain Scan

Predicting which teenagers will be binge drinkers may be possible

I'm guessing this will also get 70% accurate results:
Put your hungry teenager at the kitchen table. Give them a choice between meat or candy.
The ones who choose candy will most likely enjoy binge drinking too.

Things that make me want to vomit

I quit drinking, then I got addicted to food

Zombies with Benefits

Alcohol may protect trauma patients from later complications

Injured patients who have alcohol in their blood have a reduced risk for developing cardiac and renal complications, according to a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Among patients who did develop complications, those with alcohol in their blood were less likely to die.
"After an injury, if you are intoxicated there seems to be a substantial protective effect," says UIC injury epidemiologist Lee Friedman, author of the study. "But we don't fully understand why this occurs."

Although there are a lot of possible mechanisms this could be-  glucose metabolism, stress response, antimicrobial effects or any number of things...
It does go a long way in explaining how the Alcoholism trait has endured.

Nonetheless-  No drinking and driving.  Or power tools.
Have a nice weekend.

Brain Eating Zombie of the Day

 Ernest Kurtz

AA is not a fraud: Why haters are afraid to listen

Here's why the program works, no matter what critics say: It's really about listening, living, spirituality and joy.

Um sorry- no it's not.
It's really about glucose metabolism.  And any "rehab/detox protocol" that includes donuts in it's "therapy sessions" doesn't understand the first thing about addiction in general or alcoholism in particular.

Those meetings actually perpetuate the pathology they claim to alleviate.
And you have no idea.

I don't disagree with AA because I make more money if I do.  
Their shit doesn't work.
I've Been There.  Done That.  For Years.  Didn't change a damn thing.

I consider that fraud and malpractice.

Brain Eating Zombies of the Day

Effects of alcohol in young binge drinkers predicts future alcoholism

Heavy social drinkers who report greater stimulation and reward from alcohol are more likely to develop alcohol use disorder over time, report researchers. The findings run counter to existing hypotheses that innate tolerance to alcohol drives alcoholism. "Heavy drinkers who felt alcohol's stimulant and pleasurable effects at the highest levels in their 20s were the ones with the riskiest drinking profiles in the future and most likely to go on and have alcohol problems in their 30s," the lead said, "In comparison, participants reporting fewer positive effects of alcohol were more likely to mature out of binge drinking as they aged."

Our "alcoholism experts".
Just getting around to documenting the obvious.  Excellent progress guys.

Science you can use

Alcohol is not a direct cause of cognitive impairment in older men

He said that a commonly held belief, based on previous association studies, was that excessive alcohol use is a cause of cognitive impairment. However, the link had never actually been proven.
He and his fellow researchers decided to test the theory by examining a gene known to be responsible for how successfully a person is able to metabolise alcohol - that is, their degree of tolerance for alcohol.
...Professor Almeida said that if heavy alcohol use is a direct cause of cognitive impairment, then people with the genetic variant that makes them avoid alcohol should have lower risk of cognitive impairment later in life. However, that was not the case.

No evidence that alcohol causes depression, study finds
They used the same protocol, had surprisingly similar results.

I think this is some of the most groundbreaking research in a century.
Relegates the assumption that "people get what they deserve" to the trash can.
Those "self-inflicted conditions"...

Thank you, thank you very much.

Oh Really

Man Brews Booze Inside His Own Gut

The 61-year-old could get stumbling drunk just by eating a bowl of pasta.

Fascinating, I'll have to research this more when I get a minute.

Call Him Sherlock

Denis M. McCarthy
Sober Drinking Knowledge Fails 'in the Moment' of Intoxication

Seriously.
Your "Alcoholism Experts" at work.

How Little Narcoleptics Are Made

Impulse Control Problems

They found that drunk people showed a reduced ability to identify asymmetrical faces, as well as a reduced preference for symmetrical faces. Not only that, but women made more mistakes than men in identifying the asymmetrical faces.

 This seems to have evolved because the women get fat and the men go bald.  Ha.