This is how long it takes for brain to repair damage due to heavy drinking

A study published in the international peer-reviewed journal Alcohol shows that the brain of a person recovering from alcohol use disorder can repair its structure once drinking ceases for at least 7.3 months.

It is known that people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) tend to have thinning in regions of their cortex, which is critical for multiple higher-order cognitive functions.

While there have been studies which show how some regions of the brain recover when a person stops drinking, the impact and the speed with which the recovery occurs was unknown.

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How was the study conducted?

The recent study included 88 people suffering from AUD who underwent brain scans at approximately one week, one month, and 7.3 months of abstinence, however, only 40 continued to abstain from alcohol for the full period.

This is because some participants also joined at the one-month mark, which means 23 individuals did not have scans taken for one week.

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The researchers also looked at 45 people who had never had AUD and measured their cortical thickness at baseline and again about nine months later to confirm that the areas measured remained the same.

What did the study find?

The United States-based study found that those who quit drinking were able to gain cortical thickness over time, particularly during the first month and the progress continued till the 7.3 month mark, where thickness was comparable to those without AUD.

“The few longitudinal studies investigating cortical thickness changes during abstinence are limited to the first month of sobriety,” the team of researchers led by psychiatrist and behavioural scientist Timothy Durazzo from Stanford University wrote.

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“However, the extent of regional cortical thickness recovery over an extended period of abstinence is unknown,” they added. Researchers also noted how the results due to the small sample size and lack of diversity may not be generalised.

Durazzo and his team also did not find any significant relationships between cortical thickness and current substance abuse, including drugs, smoking and so on or psychiatric disorders, or past cigarette smoking.

The authors also noted that they did not account for variables such as genetics, physical activity, and people’s liver and lung health, which may have affected the results of their study.

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The authors concluded by saying that the data provides “clinically relevant information on the beneficial effects of sustained sobriety on human brain morphology, and reinforces the adaptive effects of abstinence-based recovery in AUD.”