Memory loss after drinking alcohol. Scientists have named three main reasons for this

Alcohol consumption not only increases the risk of dying from a heart attack and other diseases in the long term, but if overdosed, it can very often cause memory loss the next morning. A group of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) tried to find out the cause of such “darkening of the mind”. The findings were published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

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As researchers note, memory impairment is a fairly common consequence of alcohol consumption. To understand the reasons, scientists conducted an experiment with 79 volunteer students aged 18-22.

They were all fitted with wrist sensors to monitor their level of alcohol intoxication and were also asked to fill out questionnaires every morning reporting whether they had drunk the night before and whether they remembered the evening’s events.

During the experiment, which lasted a month, 486 episodes of alcohol consumption were recorded, of which 147 were followed by amnesia. 69.3% of the experiment participants experienced memory loss at least once during this time.

By comparing all collected data, the authors of the study managed to identify three main factors that affect memory loss after drinking – the frequency of alcohol intoxication, its duration and maximum value.

“The results support the notion that how a person drinks is important in predicting the risk of alcohol-related memory loss,” the scientists said. According to researchers, a rapid increase in alcohol intoxication increases the risk of memory loss 2.69 times. The maximum concentration of alcohol in the blood increases the “risk of blacking out” by 2.93 times. But the strongest effect is the duration of intoxication: with long-term use of alcohol, the risk of short-term amnesia increases 4.16 times.

At the same time, the authors of the study admitted that the representativeness of the obtained results is not ideal. First, they had a very small sample of subjects, most of whom were light-skinned (86.1%) girls (55.7%).

Second, the experiment only lasted a month and fell on St. Patrick’s Day (which is traditionally associated with alcohol consumption) and then the Easter weekend (when many students go home to drink less).

It is also noted that in some cases students may not have realized that they have a memory impairment and apparently did not record it in the questionnaire.

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