Tackling our love affair with booze — from deep brain stimulation to ‘Dry January’

But Frank Plummer’s main worry, after undergoing deep brain stimulation for alcohol use disorder, “was whether or not my hair would grow back.”The former scientific director of Canada’s national microbiology laboratory is one year out from becoming the first person in a North American trial to undergo deep brain stimulation, or DBS, for chronic and compulsive heavy drinking.

Booze has been associated with an increased risk of stroke and heart disease. It’s been causally linked to the development of cancers of the digestive tract, nasopharynx, liver, rectum and breast. It’s been classified a Class 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, meaning that it’s known to promote cancer in humans. In the U.S.

In many ways we drink a lot less than we once did. In the ‘70s, “it was normal to go for a drink every lunchtime, and then go out for a drink after work,” said Dr. Kevin Moore, a consultant hepatologist based at University College London and Royal Free Hospital. To find out, Moore and colleagues recruited 94 moderate-heavy drinkers representing the 25 per cent of the population that drinks above recommended guidelines. After a month of abstinence, volunteers saw significant improvements in insulin resistance, blood pressure and body weight. They also saw a decrease in circulating concentrations of two cancer-related growth factors, both of which are thought necessary for tumours to grow.

Plummer drank to unwind from the pressures of running a research operation in Nairobi during the AIDS epidemic, and then a 400-person national microbiology lab in Winnipeg. “I think in some ways it also helped me, relaxing me enough to the point where I could think, and contemplate,” he told the Post. But after leaving the NML, things got “really bad.” He was drinking in the morning, and could polish off 20 ounces of scotch a night. “It got to be the main focus of my life.

perhaps the earliest form of soma known to 'civilized' man...

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