• Question: how badly impaired are the synapses after a binge drinking session, I know that the chemicals impair the electrical signal transmitting, how badly is it? is this why people who drink lots have bad movement and shake alot?

    Asked by iamripped to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      hello again! well ‘the shakes’ are usually a sign that someone has withdrawn from alcohol – the body shakes because it is withdrawing. Excessive alcohol consumption can interfere with NMDA receptors in the brain – these receptors are involved in memory function.

    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Well iamripped, alcohol is a gap junction blocker. Gap junctions are little electrical connections between nerve cells that help the messages pass from one cell to another even more quickly than via synapses. Gap junctions are involved in generating the brain activity associated with memory formation. Alcohol blocks these gap junctions and this is why memories after a drinking session are hazy. The falling and shaking is to do with the body’s reaction to alcohol as it impairs your balance.

    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Ingesting any sort of toxin (alcohol is basically a poison) causes damage to the cells throughout your body, including in your brain, making them work slightly less efficiently. In most organs, any cells that die as a consequence can be replaced (notably in the liver), but as brain cells (neurons) in general don’t divide they can’t be replaced. A sinlge binge drinking session probably won;t cause too much damage (I hope!), but repeated heavy drinking will undoubtedly cause substantial loss of cells. People who drink heavily may shake for various reasons – because they have lost neurons in brain regions controlling movement, because their remaining brain cells are damaged, and because they are undergoing withdrawal symptoms until they get their next drink (addiction)

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