How Alcohol Rewires Your Brain and Increases Cancer Risk by 40%! The Alcohol Doctor, Dr. Sarah Wakeman

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1d ago 1:47:56

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Are you unknowingly damaging your brain and raising your cancer risk with just one drink? Discover the alarming truth about alcohol from Dr. Sarah Wakeman, what every adult needs to know now.

Dr. Sarah Wakeman is senior medical director for substance use disorder at Mass General Brigham healthcare system, the number one research system in the U.S. She is also the Medical Director of the Mass General Hospital Addiction Consult Team and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

She explains:

How alcohol is hijacking your dopamine system.
Why no amount of alcohol is good for your brain.
The shocking truth about moderate drinking.
How doctors are failing addiction patients on a daily basis.
Why 1 in 3 people will struggle with alcohol.

00:00 Intro

02:23 Sarah's Mission

02:52 Sarah's Education and Experience

03:40 Issues With Addiction Treatment in the Modern World

04:31 What Is Addiction?

05:48 What Things Are Capable of Being Addictive?

06:47 Physiological Dependence vs. Addiction

07:25 Scale of the Problem: Why Should People Care?

08:59 Is Society Getting Better or More Addicted?

09:32 Substance-Related Deaths During the Pandemic

10:22 What Drives People to Use Substances?

12:24 Substances' Effects on the Brain

14:29 Does Trauma at a Young Age Increase Addiction Risk?

16:36 The Opposite of Addiction Is Connection

18:11 Why Addiction Matters to Sarah

19:02 Living With a Family Member Struggling With Addiction

20:43 Who Is Sarah Trying to Save?

22:57 Change Happens When the Pain of Staying the Same Is Greater Than the Pain of Change

25:53 Misconceptions About Alcohol

28:15 Is There a Healthy Level of Alcohol Consumption?

28:50 Is One Drink a Day Safe for Health?

30:38 Link Between Moderate Drinking and Cancer

33:23 Types of Cancer Linked to Alcohol Consumption

34:51 Cancer Risk Among Heavy Drinkers

35:31 Heavy Drinking and Comorbidities as Cancer Risk Factors

36:20 How Alcohol Drives Cancer Mechanisms

38:00 Alcohol and Weight Gain

38:54 The Role of the Liver

42:07 Liver's Ability to Regenerate

46:37 How Alcohol Causes Brain Deterioration

47:23 Other Organs Affected by Alcohol

48:00 Alcohol's Impact on the Heart

49:08 Body Fat Percentage and Alcohol Tolerance

50:05 Does High Alcohol Tolerance Prevent Organ Damage?

50:46 What Is a Hangover?

52:14 Balancing the Risks and Benefits of Alcohol

53:47 Is Rehab Effective for Addiction?

56:50 Psychedelic Therapy for Addiction

57:36 GLP-1 Medications for Addiction Treatment

59:03 Ads

59:59 Celebrity Addictions

1:02:24 Stigma Around Addiction

1:04:41 Addiction Cases That Broke Sarah's Heart

1:12:43 Is Empathy Positive Reinforcement for Addicted Individuals?

1:15:34 Setting Boundaries With an Addicted Person

1:18:57 Motivational Interviewing to Support Recovery

1:22:19 Finding Motivation for Positive Change

1:26:03 Habits to Support Addiction Recovery

1:29:12 Ads

1:30:18 Can the Brain Recover From Addiction?

1:34:55 Unexpected Sources of Addictive Behavior

1:35:35 How Sarah Copes With Difficult Addiction Cases

1:37:10 Importance of Language Around Addiction

1:41:40 How Labels Limit People's Potential

1:46:05 Sarah's Upcoming Book

You can find out more about Dr. Sarah’s profile, here: https://bit.ly/4mxu191

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Research document:

https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/DOAC-Dr-Sarah-Wakeman-Independent-Research-further-reading.pdf

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