Alcohol Rewires Your Brain - Dr. Sarah Wakeman

(instrumental music plays) The amount of alcohol it takes to begin to cause health-related problems is much lower than you think.

Okay, so if I have this glass of wine every day?

You'd be in what we call moderate risk, which is associated with pretty much every form of cancer.

So say that I'm drinking two of those there?

If you're drinking two of those glasses, we're talking, like, a 40% increase. But even drinking that amount, your risk of breast cancer would increase by about 5%.

This amount?

Mm-hmm. Which, for many people, is very normal. So there's a lot of misinformation out there about how much should you drink, which I think people don't know, but I can take you through everything. So.

Dr. Sarah Wakeman is a Harvard professor and addiction expert.

Leading the charge against one of the biggest public health crises of our time, addiction, bringing facts, empathy, and hard-earned truth. One in three people may have a problem with alcohol at some point in their lives, and globally, 2.6 million people every year die from alcohol-related causes because pretty much every organ in the body is impacted by it. You can see here, this is a 43-year-old person where their brain looks the way a 90-year-old with dementia would look because of that brain damage over time from alcohol use. But what drives people to use substances is probably the most important question. And if we look at studies, one is about 40 to 60% genetics and then other half of the equation is trauma. And so when we hear someone talk about alcohol gives them pain relief, whether that's emotional or physical, that's a very real thing. That's because your sort of natural painkiller system is activated by drinking. It's an anti-anxiety and a pain medication sort of all in one.

So when you think about how we treat addiction, where are we going wrong?

The biggest problem is that people haven't been given the evidence and tools to understand addiction. But also, many rehabs don't offer the things that we know are actually effective.

And what is it that people need?

Great question. One of the most effective tools we teach people is something called (glass shatters) And they found that people drank much less after it. Yeah.

Wow. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show, and you like what we do here, and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is, if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. (instrumental music plays) Dr. Sarah Wakeman, with all the work that you do, what is the mission that you are on?