I have been trying to figure something out about alcoholism and brain damage. Someone I know was diagnosed with “alcoholic dementia” a few years ago and I was told that his brain was shrinking. I have never talked to the doctors myself, and the person who does is a bad listener. I know he was a very very heavy drinker for many years, and I know that his brain stopped working and has been getting worse and worse, but I don’t understand anything about the diagnosis or what to call it.
Every time I try to google it I wind up more confused than I started. Is there more than one type of alcohol related brain damage? Is “wet brain” the same thing as cerebral shrinkage? Is there one term for brain shrinkage due to longterm alcohol abuse and how does alcohol cause the brain to shrink?
If anyone could put it in a nutshell for me I would be so grateful. Google seems to lead me in circles.
The common type that I am familiar with is Wernicke’s-Korsakoff syndrome. They are sometimes considered seperate disorders but they have the same cause and usually occur together. Brain damage induced by alcoholism is caused by a lack of thiamine (vitamin B1).
Symptoms include:
* Difficulty with walking and balance
* Confusion
* Drowsiness
* Paralysis of some of the eye muscles
Try using the term “alcohol related dementia” when searching, to uncover a lot of information.
In brief, there’s classic thiamine-deficiency dementia, usually due to a diet high in alcohol and low to absent in thiamine, and then there’s a broad category of dementia that is associated with alcohol but not so clearly related to thiamine deficiency.
Thank you, Shagnasty. The description of Wernicke’s-Korsakoff is what’s getting me confused. I think that is also called “wet brain.” He was not the type of drunk to not eat well. He was probably better nourished than a most people. The other thing in that link that makes me think there’s another type of brain damage it says the patient doesn’t really notice how much he’s losing his memory. He was completely aware of how his brain functions were deteriorating when it first started to show up. He had a huge amount of anxiety about it which he hid, along with his symptoms, until the last possible second, and when he finally had to admit he was disoriented he was terrified about the whole thing. The first noticable symptom wasn’t memory loss, it was the disorientation.
Is there another type of brain damage that causes the brain to shink and works in a different way?
Depending on the patient’s age and circumstances, the dementia might be co-morbid with the alcoholism, and not caused by the alcoholism. There may be a tendency to attribute the dementia to alcoholism.