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Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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When Science Becomes Propaganda: The Caffeine & Alcohol Conundrum

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science
Ugh. To me there’s nothing worse than junk science, especially when it’s in the service of an agenda. And that’s how this latest “study” in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research comes across. The title of the “study” is Effects of Energy Drinks Mixed with Alcohol on Behavioral Control: Risks for College Students Consuming Trendy Cocktails and was conducted at the Universities of Northern Kentucky and the Maryland School of Public Health. Here’s how the press release for the study explains it:

  • A new laboratory study compares the effects of alcohol alone versus alcohol mixed with an energy drink on a cognitive task, as well as participants’ reports of feelings of intoxication.
  • Results show that energy drinks can enhance the feeling of stimulation that occurs when drinking alcohol.
  • However, energy drinks did not alter the level of behavioral impairment when drinking alcohol, particularly for impaired impulse control.
  • The combination of impaired impulse control and enhanced stimulation may make energy drinks combined with alcohol riskier than alcohol alone.

Energy drinks mixed with alcohol, such as Red Bull™ and vodka, have become trendy. While this consumption has been implicated in risky drinking practices and associated accidents and injuries, there is little laboratory research on how the effects of this combination differ from those of drinking alcohol alone. A recent laboratory study, comparing measures of intoxication due to alcohol alone versus alcohol/energy drink, has found that the combination of the energy drink enhanced feelings of stimulation in participants. However, the energy drink did not change the level of impairment for impulsive behavior. These findings suggest that energy drinks combined with alcohol may increase the risks associated with drinking.

But take a closer look at what that says. The caffeine stimulates. Well, duh. That’s what caffeine does. Did anybody doubt that? Then the study goes on to say that “energy drinks did not alter the level of behavioral impairment when drinking alcohol,” meaning it didn’t make people more drunk. Then they conclude combining caffeine and alcohol “may increase the risks associated with drinking [my emphasis].”

Here’s how they conducted it:

Marczinski [lead author] and her colleagues randomly assigned 56 college student participants (28 men, 28 women), between the ages of 21 and 33, to one of four groups that received four different doses: 0.65 g/kg alcohol, 3.57 ml/kg energy drink, energy drink/alcohol, or a placebo beverage. The participants’ behavior was measured on a task that measures how quickly one can execute and suppress actions following the dose. Participants also rated how they felt, including feelings of stimulation, sedation, impairment, and levels of intoxication.

“We found that an energy drink alters the reaction to alcohol that a drinker experiences when compared to a drinker that consumed alcohol alone,” said Marczinski. “A consumer of alcohol, with or without the energy drink, acts impulsively compared to when they had not consumed alcohol. However, the consumer of the alcohol/energy drink felt more stimulated compared to an alcohol-alone consumer. Therefore, consumption of an energy drink combined with alcohol sets up a risky scenario for the drinker due to this enhanced feeling of stimulation and high impulsivity levels.”

“To reiterate,” said Arria, “the investigators found that the presence of an energy drink did not change the level of impairment associated with alcohol consumption.” It did, however, change the perception of impairment.

“The findings from this study provide concrete laboratory evidence that the mixture of energy drinks with alcohol is riskier than alcohol alone,” said Marczinski. “College students need to be aware of the risks of these beverages. Moreover, clinicians who are working with risky drinkers will need to try and steer their clients away from these beverages.”

But that’s hardly “concrete” as she characterizes it. In fact, it’s the very opposite of concrete. It didn’t change impairment, just how people felt about it, how they perceived it. From that “insight” they concluded that since being stimulated “sets up a risky scenario for the drinker” that therefore the risk is greater. And they recommend that people should “be aware of the risks.” So far, so good. But if you didn’t realize drinking coffee after alcohol would stimulate you, perhaps you shouldn’t be in college after all. Maybe it’s time to lower your sights if that obvious bit of wisdom eluded you. I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

When Marczinski states that “[y]oung people are now drinking alcohol in different ways than they have in the past” I have to wonder what her evidence is for that nonsense. People have been mixing caffeine and alcohol for as long as the two have been around, I’d wager. This is one of those generational things, where the older one always believes the younger generation is worse than they were. The only difference between when I was a kid and now, at least regarding caffeine and alcohol, is that you don’t have to go to the trouble of mixing it yourself.

And I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m not a fan of alcopops or alcoholic drinks with caffeine added (that is not naturally occurring like many coffee stouts, for example). But for me, that’s not the issue. The issue is society going out of its mind over a perceived problem for which there is only anecdotal evidence that there even is a problem. And this study seems like more of the same. I don’t like these drinks, don’t drink them myself, but I don’t think they should be banned just because some people don’t like them. There are obviously adults who bought them, and want to continue buying them, and they shouldn’t be removed from shelves just so that kids can’t buy them. Kids are already prohibited from buying them. If kids can still get them, that’s an entirely different problem. Kids can’t own guns either, but I don’t see any movement to ban all guns so that we can keep them out of the hands of children. That’s just not how a society should function. We shouldn’t make the world safe for our children by only allowing kid friendly products to be in it.

In the end, this “study” is hardly the hard evidence that the caffeine and alcohol conundrum has now been solved and they’ve found the data to close the book on this scourge. Even its authors know as much, as they use qualifying words all over the place. Their hesitation is right there in the title of the press release, which is “Drinking energy beverages mixed with alcohol may be riskier than drinking alcohol alone.” [my emphasis.] Up front, it tells you this is not as conclusive as you might otherwise think because they admit that a greater risk is simply possible. Beyond using an almost laughable 56 test subjects, the study simply jumps to anecdotal conclusions that are not supported by what passes for hard data. There really isn’t any hard data beyond people’s feelings after having consumed alcohol and then alcohol with caffeine and the authors then concluding those feelings might turn into actions that were riskier.

But even as honestly as the study states that their “findings suggest that energy drinks combined with alcohol may increase the risks associated with drinking,” naturally that’s not how it’s being reported. Every headline has essentially removed the qualifying “might” and made it sound far scarier and more conclusive than it really is. Here’s just a few examples.

Combining Energy Drinks with Alcohol More Dangerous Than Drinking Alcohol Alone at Partnership for a Drug Free America and as linked to a Join Together e-mail blast. And that report begins by stating that “A new study finds that consuming a caffeine-infused energy drink combined with alcohol is more dangerous than drinking alcohol alone.” But that’s not what the study concluded at all.

Likewise, HealthDay’s headline was Alcohol-Energy Drink Combo Riskier Than Booze Alone, Study Says, MedPage states Alcohol and Energy Drinks, a Risky Combination and News Feed Researcher claims Study: Alcohol, Energy Drinks Are Risky Combo. But again, those headlines are misleading. That’s not what the “study” claims. The “study” never even mentions drunk driving, but sure enough some of the news reports do. All the “study” says is that drinking alcohol and caffeine might make you feel more stimulated which might possibly lead you to act more impulsively, which might make you engage in riskier behaviors. Maybe. Maybe we can agree that’s not exactly science, but propaganda.

Beer In Art #123: Anthony Picone’s Beer Illustrations

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art-beer
This week’s works of art are by Brooklyn illustrator Anthony Picone, whose art can be found on his blog Ant Stuff. This first one is called “Red Beer.”

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This second one was created for Houston Beer Week.

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And I like the Beer Turtle, similar to the Iroquois creation myth where the world rode on the back of a giant turtle.

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Forgivable Sin shows Jesus and Satan sharing a beer. See beer can solve any problem. Good and evil? Have a beer.

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Here’s Tiki Beer and Viking with a Beer.

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And Tin Man Beer along with Bird Beer.

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And Picone seems to have a thing for showing pint glasses affection.

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And finally, here’s some Hot Pints.

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That’s honestly a small sample of his beer-themed work. He also draws a lot of zombies, monsters, and assorted characters, all of which can be seen at his Antstuff blog.

The Brain and Alcohol Research Project

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trinity-college
Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut, at the end of March released some preliminary results after three years of a five-year study entitled the Brain and Alcohol Research Project. In a press release entitled What Students’ Brains Have Told Us about the Effects of Binge Drinking, they revealed the following:

Young adults who binge drink tend to perform worse in class than normally would have been expected, but only in the first year of college. After that, drinking to excess produces no discernible difference in academic performance.

So the obvious takeaway from that is that during a student’s first year away from home and away from parental rule, young adults tend to go a little wild that first year but then settle down into academic life for the remaining three years of their four-year college experience. They may not stop drinking, but they figure out how to hit the books, too. It seems rather predictable when you think about, especially when there’s virtually no alcohol education prior to college and in some states even parents are forbidden from educating their own children about drinking.

But it also seems to fly in the face of the neo-prohibitionist hue and cry about underage drinking being as bad for student performance as believed. And undoubtedly the worst of it is because it’s underground as a result of the minimum age being 21 instead of a more reasonable 18.

Also known as BARCS (for Brain and Alcohol Research with College Students), the project is “a large-scale longitudinal study that includes more than 2,000 college students from diverse backgrounds, set out to definitively address previously unanswered questions such as: Can heavy drinking in college affect brain structure and grades? If so, is it related to the overall amount of alcohol consumed or more to consumption patterns, such as binging and blackouts? Why is it that many students drink heavily in college but only a minority goes on to have alcohol problems after college? Are all adolescents affected equally by alcohol in terms of possible effects on brain and risk for later alcohol abuse? Is there a way to identify the people who will be longer-term problem drinkers?”

Unfortunately, I believe they begin with a failed premise. The study defines binge drinking “as a pattern of drinking that raises a person’s blood alcohol content to 0.08 percent or above.” That means drinking enough to be considered drunk at the lowest BAC allowed in most jurisdictions is the same as binge drinking. It’s amazing how what it means to binge drink keeps getting lower and lower, presumably in an effort to make the perceived problem seem increasingly worse. But this greater incidence of binge drinking is due entirely to continually redefining its meaning. Equating binge drinking with merely being drunk (under the legal definition) removes any distinction between the two and renders it meaningless.

Thirty Percent Of Americans Drink Once A Week

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harris-poll
A Harris Poll conducted in March of this year concluded that Three in Ten Americans Drink Alcohol at Least Once a Week. The poll, conducted by Harris Interactive, surveyed 2,379 adults between March 7 and 14, 2011. Not surprisingly, beer continues to be the most popular alcoholic beverage, followed by American wine and vodka. And men still drink beer more than women “75% vs. 50%.”

Harris-What_People_Drink-2011

Here are some other findings from the poll:

Question 1: “How often do you drink alcohol, including beer or wine?”

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Question 2: “How often do you drink alcohol, including beer or wine?”

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Question 3: “Which alcoholic beverages do you personally drink either at home or away from home? If you have mixed drinks, such as sours or martinis, please indicate the type of liquor they contain.”

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Question 4: “Although you may drink several types of alcoholic beverages, which one type would you say you drink most often?”

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Naturally, I have a couple of quibbles:

  1. Why did they separate out domestic and foreign wine, but not domestic and foreign beer?
  2. “It’s probably not surprising that men and women have different drinking preferences.” Maybe, but isn’t this something of a self-perpetuating prophecy? I know plenty of women who love beer and find wine too sweet. I also know women who claim to find beer too bitter but drink their weight in coffee. I can’t help but wonder if we keep reinforcing this by asking the question, and people respond with the answer they think is the case, which ends up making it real when maybe it’s not.
  3. “According to many doctors and medical studies, a glass of wine is good for one’s health. And even beyond wine, a drink, as long as it’s in moderation, is something that people shouldn’t be afraid of having.” Goddammit, why does this one persist, that “wine” is good for you but the rest are not? By omission, the statement implies that beer and other alcohol is not “good for one’s health” or at a minimum not “as” good which infuriates me. And adding the qualifying statement that “beyond wine” it’s okay to drink the other alcoholic drinks “as long as it’s in moderation” likewise implies that it’s healthful to drink as much wine as you like. How can they be so detail-oriented about the statistics involved in polling, and so ignorant in their statements of analysis? Sheesh.

Toronado Blunch 2011 Recap

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toronado sean-paxton
Last Sunday, the annual Toronado Belgian Beer Lunch took place, with the food again being done by Sean Paxton, the Homebrew Chef. The Belgian lunch — or Blunch, as I’ve taken to calling it — began promptly at 11:30 a.m. and went until nearly 5:30 p.m. Now that’s slow food, but really with twelve courses the pacing was just right. I had the pleasure of being seated at a table with Toronado owner Dave Keene, the beer chef Bruce Paton, and my favorite ne’er do well, Dave Suurballe. Here’s a recap of the meal.

2011 Toronado Blunch

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Before the Blunch began.

Pre-Lunch Reception:

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Handmade Toronado bread.

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Beer #1: Van Steenberge Ertveld’s Wit

First Course

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Belgian Sushi: Wit-flavored brioche infused with foie gras, roasted eel, Poperings Hommel Bier duck egg green aioli, pea shoots

Paired with DuPont Avril

Second Course

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Charcuturie Platter: Duck rillettes braised in Russian River Consecration with a Supplication gelee, duck pistachio apricot infused with Sanctification terrine, pork/duck liver and Orval beer pâté, cornichons, heirloom radishes, house-made Goulden Carolus Noel mustard, currant & Consecration compote

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Served with local The Bejkr breads

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Paired with Chimay Grand Reserve 3 Liter and Duvel Triple Hop

Third Course

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DuPont Avec Les Bons Voeux Poached Sole: On a bed of leek and turnip purée, topped with a lobster crawfish mussel Tripel Karmeliet waterzooi sauce

Paired with De Dolle Arabier and Moinette Blond

Fourth Course

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Goat Butter Poached Sea Scallop: Smoked in Mort Subite lambic barrel staves, De Ranke Guldenburg demi glaze, celery root purée infused with Affligem Noel, fennel pollen

Paired with Petrus Aged Pale

Fifth Course

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Seared Duck Breast with Sour Cherry Sauce: Sonoma County duck breasts cooked sous vide with shallots, thyme, with a dried sour cherries Hannsen Oude Kriek sauce on a bed of black barley simmer in Delirium Noel and TCHO cocoa nibs

Paired with Bocker Cuvee De Jacobins and Drie Fonteinen Oude Kriek

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The Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton.

Sixth Course

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Medium Rare Short Ribs: Cooked sous vide for 48 hours in Rochefort 8, caramelized shallots and thyme, served on a bed of Flemish-style mashed potatoes, with a fig, date Petrus Oud Bruin gravy

Paired with Echt Kriekenbier and Rochefort 10

Seventh Course

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Crepenette: Westmalle Dubbel infused Spring Sonoma lamb, mixed with creamed leeks, wrapped in caul fat topped with a sirop de Liége (pears, date simmered in a Chimay Red ale syrup) and Belgian endive salad

Paired with Rodenbach Grand Cru 2008 keg

Eighth Course

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Foie Gras: Lobes of foie gras poached in Boon Kriek, made into truffles and coated in Cantillon Rosé De Gambrinus gelee, garnished with hibiscus sea salt

Paired with Malheur Brut Reserve 2006

Ninth Course

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French Lentil Salad: Lentils simmered in Fantôme Saison, curry-scented green cauliflower, ‘wit’ candied cashews, mâche greens and toasted hemp seeds tossed in a Straus yogurt bergamot orange Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René dressing

Paired with Oud Beersal Oude Geueze Vieille

Tenth Course

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Assorted Belgian Cheeses: Grevenbroecker, Wavreumont, “St. Maure,” Charmoix, Meikaas, and Kriek Washed Fromage served with pomegranate Supplication honey, the Bejkr Biologlque bread, hazelnut fig crackers, dried fruit, honey blood orange peel candied pistachios

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Cheese Plate #2

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Paired with Liefmans Cuvee Brut and Orval, along with the bread and crackers.

Eleventh Course

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Crêpe: Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait beer curd, Hanssens Oudbeitje rhubarb jam, Westmalle Tripel chamomile syrup wrapped in a Sara Buckwheat Ale crepe

Paired with De Struise T’sjeeses

Twelfth Course

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Chocolate Pot de Crème Deconstructed Pie: Speculoos cookie crust, Belgian dark chocolate infused custard, Chantilly cream

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Paired with De Struise Pannepot 2007, Scaldis Noel 1998 Magnums and De Struise Black Albert 2009, beers 18 through 20.

Okay, well that didn’t suck. Another spectacular meal. Thanks Sean and Dave.

Cheese Buying Time

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cheese
A gentle reminder that there are exactly three weeks until the next Session a.k.a. The Great Online Beer & Cheese-Off. Now would be a perfect time to pick up three cheeses for the tasting, try them, and start thinking about what beers might work best with them. Here are the cheeses to be on the lookout for:

1. Maytag Blue

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Maytag Blue or another blue cheese.

2. Widmer 1-Year Aged Cheddar

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Widmer Cellars one-year old aged cheddar or another one-year aged cheddar cheese.

3. Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog

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Humboldt Fog from Cypress Grove Chevre or another goat cheese.

It’s easier to participate then my long-winded explanation. Just eat cheese, drink beer and write about it. On Friday, May 6.

Beer In Ads #348: Miller’s High Life On The Farm

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ad-billboard
Thursday’s ad is for Miller High Life, showing a time capsule of a scene on what appears to be a farm. But one of those genteel farms of yesteryear. There’s a horse stable in the background, and in the field there’s a groups of dogs and three people who look ready for an English-style fox hunt. The foreground shows a butler serving a couple some Miller High Life on a tray, though the bottles on the table are still over half full. And I thought dalmatians were not good at hunting (too high strung), but then maybe that’s why the woman is holding the dog.

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Your Brain On Beer

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A new study conducted at the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin appears to indicate that alcohol actually helps your memory, at least at the synapse level; that “alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better.” The new study, published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, is a mouthful, entitled Previous Ethanol Experience Enhances Synaptic Plasticity of NMDA Receptors in the Ventral Tegmental Area. And the Abstract isn’t much clearer:

Alcohol addiction (alcoholism) is one of the most prevalent substance abuse disorders worldwide. Addiction is thought to arise, in part, from a maladaptive learning process in which enduring memories of drug experiences are formed. However, alcohol (ethanol) generally interferes with synaptic plasticity mechanisms in the CNS and thus impairs various types of learning and memory. Therefore, it is unclear how powerful memories associated with alcohol experience are formed during the development of alcoholism. Here, using brain slice electrophysiology in mice, we show that repeated in vivo ethanol exposure (2 g/kg, i.p., three times daily for 7 d) causes increased susceptibility to the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) of NMDA receptor (NMDAR)-mediated transmission in mesolimbic dopamine neurons, a form of synaptic plasticity that may drive the learning of stimuli associated with rewards, including drugs of abuse. Enhancement of NMDAR plasticity results from an increase in the potency of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) in producing facilitation of action potential-evoked Ca2+ signals, which is critical for LTP induction. This increase in IP3 effect, which lasts for a week but not a month after ethanol withdrawal, occurs through a protein kinase A (PKA)-dependent mechanism. Corticotropin-releasing factor, a stress-related neuropeptide implicated in alcoholism and other addictions, further amplifies the PKA-mediated increase in IP3 effect in ethanol-treated mice. Finally, we found that ethanol-treated mice display enhanced place conditioning induced by the psychostimulant cocaine. These data suggest that repeated ethanol experience may promote the formation of drug-associated memories by enhancing synaptic plasticity of NMDARs in dopamine neurons.

Professor Hitoshi Morikawa, who wrote the paper, is slightly less jargon-laden and impenetrable on the University’s website, where he more generally lays out the goals of his research:

This lab specifically focuses on the dopaminergic neurons in the ventral midbrain. They are activated by the perception and expectation of rewards. Therefore, the dopaminergic projections from the midbrain to the limbic structures constitute an endogenous reward circuit. Behaviors that lead to the enhancement of dopamine release in this brain reward circuit tend to be repeated (reinforced). Addictive drugs induce stronger stimulation of dopaminergic transmission than almost any natural reinforcers (food, sex, etc). Thus, drugs are repeatedly used (abused) in vulnerable individuals, which will lead to plastic changes in the reward circuit.

The amount and temporal profile of dopamine release is controlled by the firing pattern of dopamine neurons, which is determined by the interaction of their intrinsic membrane properties and the afferent inputs they receive from other neurons. Accordingly, we make detailed analyses of the influence of addictive drugs on membrane ionic conductances and neurotransmitter inputs of dopamine neurons, and investigate the resulting alteration in the firing pattern. We use brain slices because they retain intact synaptic connections that are necessary for these studies. Brain slices are obtained from drug-naïve animals and animals that are chronically treated with drugs to elucidate the plastic changes induced by repeated exposure to drugs in vivo. Technically, we perform patch clamp electrophysiological recordings combined with confocal fluorescent imaging of intracellular ions. These methods will allow us to delineate the cellular events that determine the excitability of neurons with a preciseness that could not be attained by other conventional techniques. Therefore, this lab offers an ideal system to link the behavior of certain types of central neurons to that of a whole organism.

But a science news website, Physog.com has the most understandable account of the study, and what it means.

Essentially, and somewhat confusingly, the study shows that while common view that too much alcohol can be bad for memory retention and learning, that how your brain reacts to it is more complicated than that.

“Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we’re talking about conscious memory,” says Morikawa, whose results were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. “Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague’s name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning. But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or ‘conditionability,’ at that level.”

So while short terms losses may occur, long term gains in subconscious memory may also be taking place. “Morikawa’s study found that repeated ethanol exposure enhances synaptic plasticity in a key area in the brain, [and] is further evidence toward an emerging consensus in the neuroscience community that drug and alcohol addiction is fundamentally a learning and memory disorder.”

When we drink alcohol (or shoot up heroin, or snort cocaine, or take methamphetamines), our subconscious is learning to consume more. But it doesn’t stop there. We become more receptive to forming subsconscious memories and habits with respect to food, music, even people and social situations.

In an important sense, says Morikawa, alcoholics aren’t addicted to the experience of pleasure or relief they get from drinking alcohol. They’re addicted to the constellation of environmental, behavioral and physiological cues that are reinforced when alcohol triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.

“People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure transmitter, but more accurately it’s a learning transmitter,” says Morikawa. “It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released.”

Alcohol, in this model, is the enabler. It hijacks the dopaminergic system, and it tells our brain that what we’re doing at that moment is rewarding (and thus worth repeating).

Among the things we learn is that drinking alcohol is rewarding. We also learn that going to the bar, chatting with friends, eating certain foods and listening to certain kinds of music are rewarding. The more often we do these things while drinking, and the more dopamine that gets released, the more “potentiated” the various synapses become and the more we crave the set of experiences and associations that orbit around the alcohol use.

Between that, and new research from the University of Michigan that may have identified a gene — the GABRA2 — that increases the risk of alcoholism in certain individuals, it seems clear that there are environmental and genetic factors that make some people more susceptible to becoming unable to drink responsibly, along with the obvious psychological factors, too. But what that also suggests is that alcoholism is more like a food allergy insofar as it does not effect everyone in the same way, and in fact the vast majority of people who do consume alcohol are able to do so responsibly and in moderation, which also allows them to take advantage of the many health benefits of drinking in moderation. Contrary to neo-prohibitionist propaganda, not everyone becomes an alcoholic with the first sip they take. Most, in fact, not only don’t, but never do, yet the anti-alcohol contingency tends to treat alcohol as a toxic substance that is dangerous to everyone equally or that everyone has the potential to become an alcoholic. I just don’t think that’s true. And the science seems to bearing that out. And because of all the beer I’ve consumed, I can remember all that, too. Thank you, beer.