Study Links Drinking, Brain Tissue Loss

DALLAS (AP — Low to moderate drinking may cause a loss of brain tissue in middle-age people, a study found.

The researchers also found that such alcohol consumption does not lower the risk of a stroke — contradicting findings from previous studies.

"I think this is an interesting study because people talk about the beneficial effects of alcohol intake on cardiovascular disease and they try to extend that to stroke," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Jingzhong Ding, a research associate at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Some studies find beneficial effects, but ours didn't."

Heavy drinking is known to raise the risk of both brain atrophy and stroke, but findings on the effects of low to moderate drinking have varied.

The new study appears in Friday's issue of the American Heart Association (news - web sites) journal Stroke.

It moves doctors a step closer to understanding what amounts of alcohol are harmful, said Dr. Edgar J. Kenton III, a professor of clinical neurology at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

Ding and his colleagues evaluated 1,909 patients, ages 55 and older, from North Carolina and Mississippi who were participants in a study on the buildup of plaque in the arteries. Researchers used information collected between 1987 and 1989 and followed up every three years until 1995.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, researchers measured the patients' ventricular and sulcal areas — voids of the brain containing only cerebrospinal fluid. Increased ventricular and sulcal size indicates a reduction in brain tissue, or atrophy.

Ding said researchers cannot make a definitive cause-and-effect link between drinking and brain atrophy because the MRIs were done only once during the study and because they found only a small reduction in tissue.

Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer
I drink I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass
and think about the workers in the brewery and
all of their hopes and dreams.  If I didn't drink this
beer, they might be out of work and their dreams
would be shattered. Then I say to myself, "It is
better that I drink this beer and let their dreams
come true, than be selfish and worry about my liver."
        --by Jack Handy

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they
wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're
going to feel all day.
       --Frank Sinatra

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be
drunk to spend time with fools.
        --Ernest Hemingway

A woman drove me to drink and I didn't
even have the decency to thank her.
       --W.C. Fields

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
     --Henny Youngman

24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case.  Coincidence?
      --Stephen Wright

When we drink, we get drunk.
When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin.
When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!
           -- Brian O'Rourke

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants
us to be happy.
        --Benjamin Franklin

Without question, the greatest invention in the
history of mankind is beer.  Oh, I grant you
that the wheel was also a fine invention, but
the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
         --Dave Barry

From Yahoo today:

Red Wine May Protect Against Breast Cancer
Thu Dec 4, 5:05 PM ET

By Janice Billingsley
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 4 (HealthDayNews) -- Red wine may do more than reduce the risk of heart disease. The grape skin and seeds appear to hold a natural cancer-fighting chemical, California researchers report.

Scientists at City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles isolated a phytochemical, called procyanidin B dimer, that when given to mice with breast cancer (news - web sites) reduced the size of their tumors.

While there are already drugs on the market that can control estrogen-dependent breast cancer development in post-menopausal women, this is the first naturally occurring phytochemical that appears to have the same effect, says study author Shiuan Chen.

"It was surprising that we were able to identify this chemical in a natural source," says Chen, director of surgical research at City of Hope. "Further, there was a pretty significant reduction of tumor size in all the mice, and a number of animals ended up with no tumors."

However, Chen says that natural phytochemicals are more likely to be used in a preventive way than as treatment for breast cancer because existing drugs are far stronger.

"We are talking about prevention," he says. "By having this in the diet, one can keep the estrogen at a lower level, which can be preventive for breast cancer."

For post-menopausal women who have breast cancer tumors that are fed by estrogen, which make up about 75 percent of breast cancers in this age group, estrogen-suppressing therapy is aimed at the estrogen produced outside of the ovaries, in peripheral tissue like fat and skin cells, Chen says.

New drugs like anastrozole, letrozole and exemestane, which are taken in pill form, work by reducing the activity of an enzyme called aromatase that is key to the production of estrogen. The estrogen is no longer available to breast cancer tumors, inhibiting their growth.

The phytochemicals work in the same way as these drugs, but have the advantage of naturally occurring in grape skins and seeds, Chen says.

The study was published this week in the journal Cancer Research.

Chen cautions that the research is based on an animal study, and that clinical trials on post-menopausal women are needed to confirm any benefit to humans. He says he's conducting such trials now.

"We have to be careful," he adds. "We don't support the idea of people drinking a lot of red wine, as alcohol is a risk factor for breast cancer."

For instance, he notes, that for women to ingest the comparable amount of procyanidin B dimer given to the mice, they'd have to drink a half bottle of red wine daily.

But he adds, for normal, healthy women, a glass of red wine a day or eating grapes with skins and seeds may just reduce the overall circulation of estrogen in the body.

Why does red wine confer this potential benefit and white wine doesn't?

Chen says red wine is made by fermenting not just the juice from a wine grape, but the skin and seeds as well, which is where the phytochemical is located. White wine is most often made by using just the juice from the grape and discarding the skin and seeds, he says.

Tom Klassen, assistant winemaker of Landmark Vineyards in Kenwood, Calif., says, "The general tendency is that red wines get fermented with skins and seeds, and white wines do not. Red wines will spend a week with skins and seeds, and sometimes much longer -- they may be on the skins for a month or more."

Dr. Jay Brooks, chief of hematology/oncology at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in Baton Rouge, La., calls the new research "very interesting work that shows that many of the foodstuffs we eat have beneficial effects.

"A lot of epidemiologic studies show that a glass of red wine may be beneficial for reducing heart disease," he says. He adds that, despite the studies showing alcohol consumption is a risk factor for breast cancer, "if a woman drinks a glass of red wine per day, it will not increase her risk of breast cancer dramatically."

=============

Great ... I'll be physically intact and mindless. Why don't they just compromise and recommend a 1/2 glass of wine a day? Jeeeeeez Lueeeeeze

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