Tuesday 17/March/2026 – 01:15 AM
revealed study A recent medical study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed scientific results related to the long-term health effects of negative habits in youth.
Laboratory experiments and careful research have shown that resorting to consuming alcoholic beverages is a common means of dealing with psychological stress and tension at the beginning of adulthood.
How cognitive decline is related to drinking alcoholic beverages
According to Medical
It is scientifically known, according to the study, that there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between stress and alcohol, as alcohol can temporarily relieve stress, but at the same time reduces the brain’s ability to manage stress on its own, which traps the person in a vicious cycle that drives them to drink more.
According to Medical
Our lab studies the neural circuits that underlie how we make decisions. We wanted to know how drinking in early adulthood combined with stress affects those circuits as we age.
The team worked with laboratory rats that have brain circuits similar to humans, and discovered that the combination of alcohol and stress has an exceptionally strong and destructive effect on the brain, as neither alone causes the same severe damage, and these permanent changes increase the likelihood of early cognitive decline compared to people who do not rely on these habits.
Decreased mental flexibility and brain changes
According to the study, once middle age arrives, the ability to think quickly and adapt to new and difficult situations is observed to decline significantly in those who drink excessively to cope with stress.
Fazi explained that middle age is the time when problems begin to accumulate, stressing that the combination of stress and alcohol creates a kind of difficulty in adapting to changing situations, which accelerates the pace of cognitive decline in the individual in a way similar to the early stages of dementia.
