Cutting Back On Moderate Drinking Can Lead To Depression, Study Says

Are you thinking of cutting back on alcohol? Well, think again as a new American study found that stopping drinking – even moderate amount can lead to mental health problems, such as depressiondefine.

Studies have shown that moderate drinking is beneficial for health as it helps in reducing or preventing against various diseases and health problems, including Parkinson’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, kidney stones, ichemic strokes, liver disease, diabetes, erectile dysfunction (ED), gallstones etc. The survey by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found that moderate drinking is beneficial to heart health and increases longevity.

Some experts even said, abstinence from alcohol is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease. Here comes another study which adds another feather in the cap of moderate drinkers!

According to the researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, cutting back on alcohol can not only bring the feeling of depressiondefine but it also reduces the capacity of the brain to produce new nerve tissues, a process called neurogenesis.

The lead author of the study, Professor Clyde Hodge, a psychiatry professor at UNC, said, "Our work establishes a link between abstinence from alcohol drinking and depression.”

Adding further he said, "In mice, depression-like behaviour was evident 14 days after termination of alcohol drinking. This suggests that people who stop drinking may experience negative mood states days or weeks after the alcohol has cleared their systems."

In the study alcohol was given to mice for 28 days and than the researchers stopped giving them their free booze. After day 14 mice began to show negative mood state and feelings of depression as their system was cleared of alcohol. To measure depression like behavior in mice, the scientists used the most reliable Porsolt Swim Test.

In this test the mice were kept in water and were allowed to swim for a period of time --six minutes. As mice are already known to be good swimmers, the task would not be difficult for them to finish. The amount of time mice spend 'floating' and 'not swimming' was measured as an index of despair or depression-like behavior. The more mice remain inactive, the more depressed they were thought.

Hodge said, "This research provides the first evidence that long-term abstinence from moderate alcohol drinking -- rather than drinking per se -- leads to a negative mood state, depression."

The experiment made researchers believe that people who stop drinking, including moderate drinkers, will have negative mood states days or may be weeks after the alcohol is out of their system.

Also, the researchers noted that the feeling of depression after quitting drinking was linked to the decrease in the neuron production in the brain, which is important to learning and memory. Hodge says, the latest studies show that the development of the nerve cells could regulate people's mood and hence the impaired creation could lead to feelings of depression.

The scientists also found that during the 14 days abstinence period, taking an antidepressant drug did helped in putting depression away and keeping the production of neurons at normal level. Thus this finding will help in providing the better treatment options for people who stop drinking.

The research was supported by the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies and the National Institutes of Health.

The results of the study appear online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of and Health and Human Services, moderate drinking means having 1 drink a day for female or people over 60 and 2 drinks a day for male.

People under the age of 21, pregnant women, recovering alcoholics, people on medications and those who intend to drive should not drink at all.