Doctors Just Found Something Horrifying in the Brains of Heavy Alcohol Drinkers

Image by Getty / Futurism Studies Boozers beware: a new study has found links between heavy alcohol consumption, brain damage, and earlier death. As the American Academy of Neurology notes, Brazilian researchers established in a new study that heavy drinkers — defined as those who have "eight or more alcoholic drinks per week," so not a particularly gigantic quantity — have a greater risk of developing brain lesions that can cause issues with memory and cognitition. Known as hyaline arteriolosclerosis, the lesions caused by this condition occur when small blood vessels in the brain narrow and become stiff and tight. "This makes it harder for blood to flow," the press release notes, "which can damage the brain over time." As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Neurology, pathologists from the University of São Paulo looked at records, both pre- and postmortem, for nearly 1,800 subjects that were published in the United Kingdom's first-class Biobank health database. Cro ... Read full article.