Sarah Wakeman

Oh, I've got one.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah.

So when we do an MRI of someone's brain, we basically, this is like a cross slice.

So it's almost like you're facing me and I'm cutting your face off and looking at your brain onwards.

Yeah.

Healthy brain tissue is the gray and white matter, and you want it to be as plump and like taking up as much space as possible because that's where all of your brain activity is.

When people get really old or have dementia, one thing we see is more and more the black space is essentially water.

So we see the brain start shrinking and shrinking, and there's more water and less active healthy brain tissue.

That process is accelerated with heavy alcohol use.

And so you can see here, this is a 43-year-old person with

severe alcohol use disorder where their brain looks the way you know a 90 year old with dementia would look because of that brain damage over time from alcohol use and so we can actually a form of dementia is related to alcohol use and so your brain can be hugely impacted with alcohol what is going on there like what's causing the brain to deteriorate in such a way because of alcohol

Yeah, well, remember I said ethanol, which is the molecule, crosses the blood-brain barrier.

And so especially when you're having these high levels of blood alcohol, that ethanol is sort of bathing your brain.

And if you think about what we talked about, inflammation and changes to cells and to DNA and proteins, that is happening at the brain level.

The other thing that can accelerate the brain damage we see with alcohol is actually nutritional deficiencies.

So people may be drinking a lot, and they're actually not getting really crucial nutrients in their diet.

And that can accelerate the process of brain damage.

We can even see a very like sudden onset amnesia from heavy alcohol use in the setting of not getting enough nutrients in your diet.

That's the brain.