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Exercise may help protect the brains of people who drink heavily, a new study suggests. Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder found exercise may help prevent damage to white matter in heavy drinkers. White matter is involved with learning, processing, thinking and communication between various regions of the brain.

Previous research found heavy alcohol exposure may have an adverse effect on white matter, U.S. News reports. The new study indicated that regular aerobic exercise, such as walking, running or bicycling, is associated with less damage to white matter in heavy drinkers.

The 60 participants, who were moderate or heavy drinkers, were asked about their drinking behaviors, their attempts to control their drinking, and their exercise routines. They also underwent brain scans that looked at white matter.

Full story of protecting the brain from alcohol at DrugFree.org

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

A Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center team studying alcohol addiction has new research that might shed light on why some drinkers are more susceptible to addiction than others.

Jeff Weiner, Ph.D., professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist, and colleagues used an animal model to look at the early stages of the addiction process and focused on how individual animals responded to alcohol. Their findings may lead not only to a better understanding of addiction, but to the development of better drugs to treat the disease as well, Weiner said.

"We know that some people are much more vulnerable to alcoholism than others, just like some people have a vulnerability to cancer or heart disease," Weiner said. "We don’t have a good understanding of what causes this vulnerability, and that’s a big question. But if we can figure it out, we may be able to better identify people at risk, as well as gain important clues to help develop better drugs to treat the disease."

Full story of alcohol addiction at Science Daily

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Researchers from the HealthyFit group at the University of Vigo have studied university students’ lifestyles; their analysis, which includes alcohol and illegal drug consumption habits, sport and food, concludes that most students indulge in unhealthy behavior. One of the main results of the study points to the high consumption of alcohol.

"The amount drunk per unit of time is higher among women. In other words, even though male students drink more often, females do so more intensively in shorter periods of time, which is known as binge drinking," explained José Mª Cancela Carral, co-author of the study published by the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Researchers randomly selected 985 students from different degree courses and in different years at the University of Vigo.

Of the females interviewed, 51.2% lead a sedentary lifestyle, while the percentage in males is 41.7%. When analyzing students who maintain an appropriate level of physical activity, 38.6% of males do physical exercise, as opposed to only 20.9% of women.

Full story of female students drinking at Science Daily

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Scientists are testing the synthetic version of the active compound in “magic mushrooms,” psilocybin, for a variety of purposes, including treatment of alcoholism, according to Time.com. The compound is also being studied as a smoking cessation aid.

At the recent annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, scientists described their research using the hallucinogen. According to the article, psilocybin is the active ingredient in more than 100 species of mushroom, and has been used for hundreds of years in ceremonies and rituals in South America.

Studies on psilocybin’s effect on smoking cessation and alcoholism have just started, but early results are promising, researchers say.

A study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry by UCLA researchers found psilocybin improved the mood of patients with anxiety related to a diagnosis of advanced-stage cancer for at least three months.

Full story of magic mushrooms treating alcoholism at DrugFree.org

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

An analysis of studies that evaluated two medications used to treat alcoholism concludes they are a good first option for people who want treatment but wish to avoid an inpatient program.

The analysis looked at acamprosate (Campral) and naltrexone (ReVia),Reuters reports. The medications may be helpful for people in different stages of recovery, because they have different effects on the brain, the researchers report in the journal Addiction.

The researchers looked at 64 trials of the two drugs, which included a total of 11,000 people. They found acamprosate was better at helping people who were not current drinkers stay sober, while naltrexone was more effective in helping people cut back on heavy drinking and avoid cravings.

Both drugs were more effective when used after participants had not been drinking for at least a few days before starting treatment, or had been through a detox program, the article noted.

Full story of medications for alcoholism at DrugFree.org

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