{"id":29240,"date":"2019-01-30T13:58:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T18:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/?p=29240"},"modified":"2021-04-26T19:29:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T23:29:33","slug":"binge-drinking-may-change-your-dna-triggering-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/binge-drinking-may-change-your-dna-triggering-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Binge Drinking May Change Your DNA, Triggering Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drinking is more common for college students than mom or dad might hope. Nearly 60 percent of students<\/a>, ages 18-22, admit to drinking at least once over the course of a month.<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t, necessarily, the occasional drink that has parents, friends and doctors concerned.<\/p>\n

Instead, it is the fact that, of the students who admit to drinking, nearly two out of three claimed to have binge drank in the same timeframe.<\/p>\n

Binge drinking — consuming a lot of alcohol in a short amount of time — comes with many immediate health concerns, including the risk of vomiting, passing out and loss of coordination.<\/p>\n

But if young people make excess drinking a habit, they can develop long-term health problems, such as high blood pressure, increased risk of heart attack and organ inflammation, among others.<\/p>\n

Despite health concerns, some people consider excess drinking while in school as a rite of passage, justified by an intention to stop drinking as much after graduation. However, a new study suggests that slowing down might not be easy, and students probably shouldn\u2019t shrug binge drinking off as \u201cjust a college thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers from Rutgers University and Yale University found that binge and heavy drinking can cause long-lasting genetic change<\/a> that can increase an individual’s craving for alcohol.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that people who drink heavily may be changing their DNA in a way that makes them crave alcohol even more,\u201d Dipak K. Sarkar<\/a>, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick and senior author of the study, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may help explain why alcoholism is such a powerful addiction, and may one day contribute to new ways to treat alcoholism or help prevent at-risk people from becoming addicted,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

By comparing groups of moderate, binge and heavy drinkers, the researchers found that the frequent and heavy drinkers had damaged the functionality of two types of genes in their bodies — one that influences the body’s biological clock and another that regulates stress.<\/p>\n

These gene mutations could explain people\u2019s inability to control their drinking behavior and alcohol intake.<\/p>\n

A paper describing the study is published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This research is intended to provide insight to develop new methods for treating alcohol addiction.<\/p>\n

It comes at a pivotal time, as more than 3 million people died from alcohol abuse in 2016 alone — accounting for 5 percent of all global deaths, according to a World Health Organization report<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drinking is more common for college students than mom or dad might hope. Nearly 60 percent of students, ages 18-22, admit to drinking at least once over the course of a month. But it isn\u2019t, necessarily, the occasional drink that has parents, friends and doctors concerned. Instead, it is the fact that, of the students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":29374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[661,620,665,432,433,434,230,229,243,579],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ace-college","category-body","category-health-wellness","category-rutgers-university-camden","category-rutgers-university-new-brunswick","category-rutgers-university-newark","category-news","category-lead-stories","category-health","category-yale-university"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking.jpg",830,533,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking-224x144.jpg",224,144,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking-300x193.jpg",300,193,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking.jpg",830,533,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking.jpg",830,533,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking.jpg",830,533,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking.jpg",830,533,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jackson Schroeder","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/author\/jackson-schroeder\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Drinking is more common for college students than mom or dad might hope. Nearly 60 percent of students, ages 18-22, admit to drinking at least once over the course of a month. But it isn\u2019t, necessarily, the occasional drink that has parents, friends and doctors concerned. Instead, it is the fact that, of the students…","featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/binge-drinking.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}