What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health

**Andrew D. Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're discussing alcohol, one of the most commonly consumed substances on the planet Earth. Should mention that both humans and non-human animals consume alcohol, either for recreational purposes, because they like the feeling that it gives them, or for medicinal purposes, or for other purposes that we'll discuss. We are of course going to discuss the effects of alcohol on our biology, ranging from its effects on individual cells, on organs and organ systems in our brain and body. We are also going to discuss the effects of the effects of alcohol. That is what being inebriated really does to our thinking and our behavior and how it does it. And we are going to address what seems to be one of the more common questions out there, which is whether or not low to moderate amounts of drinking are better for our health than zero alcohol consumption at all. And of course, we will talk about severe alcohol intake, binge drinking. We will also talk about hangover and what science says about ways to reduce the effects of hangover, either by doing things that are inoculatory, meaning before you drink or while you drink, as well as things to do if you happen to have a hangover. We will discuss some of the genetic differences for alcohol and alcoholism, and we will discuss alcohol consumption in young people and how that can be especially detrimental for reasons that I think are going to be quite surprising to most of you. My goal is that by the end of today's episode, you will have a thorough understanding of what alcohol does to your brain and body and that you will be able to make informed decisions as to whether or not you should be consuming zero, absolutely no alcohol, small to moderate amounts of alcohol. And again, we'll define exactly what that means, small to moderate amounts. And if you or somebody else that you know is consuming excessive amounts of alcohol that are clearly detrimental to your health, some of the better routes and resources that you can use in order to remove that dependence and or consumption. I'd like to preface all of that by saying that today's discussion is really geared toward giving you information. It is not about judging alcohol intake or lack of alcohol intake. I just want you to be able to make the most informed decision about alcohol possible. Before we get into today's content in detail, I just want to answer a commonly asked question about alcohol consumption and the brain. And the question that so often comes up is whether or not low to moderate amounts of alcohol, so maybe one drink a day or one or two drinks a day kind of thing, whether or not that is bad for your brain, in particular, whether or not it causes degeneration of neurons or nerve cells. Now, the reason that question comes up so often is because for many years, it's been known that high levels of alcohol consumption, so 12 to 24 drinks per week or more, is certainly causing neurodegeneration, in particular of the so-called neocortex, the outer layers of the brain that house associative memories, that house our ability to think and plan, that house our ability to regulate our more primitive drives according to context, etc.
So to make very clear, drinking a lot, so having three or four drinks per night every night of the week is clearly bad for the brain. A recent study, however, finally addressed the question of whether or not low to moderate amounts of alcohol consumption can cause brain degeneration. The title of the study is Associations Between Alcohol Consumption and Gray and White Matter Volumes in the UK Biobank, the United Kingdom Biobank. First of all, gray matter are the neurons, it's the so-called cell bodies that would house the genome of the cells, et cetera, and white matter is the connections, the fibers, the so-called axons of neurons. And it's called white matter because that tissue is surrounded by a fatty tissue called myelin, which allows nerve cells to communicate with each other very quickly. So what this study did is it looked at the brains, both the gray matter and the white matter, of more than 30,000, any more than 35,000, generally healthy middle-aged and older adults in the United Kingdom who were drinking various amounts of alcohol. What they found was that even for people that were drinking low to moderate amounts of alcohol, so one or two drinks per day, there was evidence of thinning of the neocortex, so loss of neurons in the neocortex and other brain regions. And I don't say this in order to cause alarm. I tell you this because they are important data because they reveal and indeed answer the question that has been burning for so long, whether or not chronic alcohol intake can disrupt the brain, even if the chronic intake is very low. Now, we should talk about what the word chronic means because many people, when they hear the word chronic, think high levels of whatever intake, okay? So they think five drinks a night or 10 drinks a night or people drinking every night. Now, in this study, they looked at people who on average were drinking one or two drinks per night. So, that could be 14 drinks on the weekend. It could be one drink per night. It could be seven drinks on Friday. In other words, on average, one or two drinks per night. And I think many people out there are drinking somewhere between one and two drinks per night or day of the week on average. So, that would be seven to 14 drinks per week. So, this is an important study because it says that if you're consuming even just seven glasses of wine across the week, it's likely that there is going to be some degeneration of your brain in response to that alcohol intake. Although, as mentioned earlier, we will talk about some of the things that can inoculate against some of that neuronal loss. For those of you that are interested in reading the study in more detail, we put a link to it in the show note captions. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium and potassium, the so-called electrolytes, and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potassium are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrolytes need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electrolyte concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits in cognitive and physical performance. Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of 1000 milligrams, that's one gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink Element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my body and make sure I have enough electrolytes. And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if I've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try Element, you can go to drink element, that's lmnt.com/huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drink element, lmnt.com/huberman.