访谈录 Interview 2007-05-09&11, 喝酒会导致大脑变小？

（单词翻译）

This morning on Health Watch, we’re talking about alcohol actually shrinking the brain. That happens to people who drink a lot, according to the latest research. Doctor Robert Millman is a psychiatrist¹ and a substance abuse expert at New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center. Good morning.

Good morning.

Now when we talk about people who are drinking a lot and that shrinking your brain, what qualifies as drinking a lot?

According to the study of 1,800… er, 14 drinks a week was classified as a lot of drinking, 7 to 14 was moderate. When you think about it, 14 drinks a week is not so much for a lot of people, 6 beers in one day adds up, if you drink for a couple of days, putting up a lot was 14.

And a drink is classified as a glass of wine, a bottle of beer, right?

Or an ounce and a half of Vodka.

Of, of Vodka. So what happens here is they discovered that people who drink a lot that their brains were more than one and a half percent smaller than people who don’t drink, does this fall in line with what we heard before.

Er, it’s been known for years or thought for years, that if you drank a lot, your brain shrank, you’ll get some sort of atrophy² of the brain. But it’s never been shown in this kind of er systematic³ way and it’s never been with this many people. This is actually a remarkable⁴ study, showing that the more you drink, the more your brain shrinks, (Wow) up to about 1.6%, which isn't huge, but it’s significant.

Well, and it’s more significant for women, because it affects women greater than it does men, correct?

Correct.

And why is that?

Alcohol affects women more than it does men, partly ‘cause men are bigger, men have more body water, so it’s more dilute⁵. But more important than any of other things is women lack of enzyme⁶ or lack as much as the enzyme that inactivates⁷ alcohol. So they, when they drink, something like they’re a quarter of the degradation⁸ than men do, in other words men, men get rid of the alcohol and women don't get rid of the alcohol and remains⁹ much more toxic¹⁰.

They don’t metabolize it .

They don’t metabolize it.

So, and I know you say that alcohol can actually become poison. But we hear so much about alcohol, a moderate amount being good for your cardiac health, so what’s your best advice for people, in terms of how much to drink?

A little.

A little. One or two drinks a night, but not every night, is the way to drink, er, take alcohol seriously as a sacrament, but have lots of days off, the big danger is to drink every day without a break and more than 3 drinks a day, I think is dangerous.

And the real good news here is that, if you actually stop drinking, you can recover some of that, that brain loss.

I think that’s remarkable. A paper was recently published that showed that with abstinence, there was good recovery showing that maybe you are not knocking off parts of the brain, (Right) that’s just ah, weakening.

Doctor Robert Millman, thanks so much.