Results tagged “alcoholism” from 60 Second Science

Scientists sometimes endure the most extreme conditions — active volcanoes, polar ice caps, Ann Coulter's nether regions — to answer the toughest questions about existence. In that grand tradition, researchers from San Diego State sought to answer questions about college binge drinking not by surveying after the fact, but by descending into the bowels of the party scene themselves.

The excellently-named J.D. Clapp and his fellow scientists studied more than 1,300 people at parties, making "observations" and using equipment to measure students’ blood-alcohol concentrations (BrACs). Clapp and team's results were published in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, and complements previous work by done by the prestigious team of Daniels, Beam, Jagermeister and Turkey.

Continue reading 'Put me on that research team: The Science of Toga Parties' >

Will alcohol binges on New Year’s really destroy your ability to think flexibly? That’s what this peculiar op-ed in last week’s New York Times suggests.

Citing rat research, psychiatrist Paul Steinberg writes:

…just as the news is not so great for former cigarette smokers, there is equally bad news for recovering binge-drinkers who have achieved a sobriety that has lasted years. The more we have binged — and the younger we have started to binge — the more we experience significant, though often subtle, effects on the brain and cognition.

Much of the evidence for the impact of frequent binge-drinking comes from some simple but elegant studies done on lab rats by Fulton T. Crews and his former student Jennifer Obernier. Dr. Crews, the director of the University of North Carolina Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, and Dr. Obernier have shown that after a longstanding abstinence following heavy binge-drinking, adult rats can learn effectively — but they cannot relearn.

Continue reading 'Still hungover? Don't read last week's New York Times..' >

Here's something you won't hear in the flood of uncritical media accounts that are destined to follow in the wake of this finding and its somewhat deceptively-worded press release:

It's not that Mexican Americans have some magic "alky" gene that makes them winos -- it's that Mexican Americans who happen to have a particular combination of gene variants are more prone to alcoholism, and oh by the way did we mention that we have yet to study this in any other race?

So please keep that in mind as you read the following.

Continue reading 'Mexican Americans who like the sauce can blame their genes' >