Alcohol Research: Current Reviews
Critical Measures: Next Steps In Alcohol Research and Policy Register now for our 2016 Annual Conference to take advantage of our early bird discount which has now been extended until 16 February 2016. Download the conference programme to find out more. We have an excellent line-up of speakers with a keynote by Jill Rutter, Institute for […]
Register now for Alcohol Research UK’s Postgraduate and Early Career Symposium for 2016.
The UK Chief Medical Officers have published new guidelines for low-risk levels of alcohol consumption. This brief guide will explain what they mean.
A new paper from an Alcohol Research UK-funded PhD student has been published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Jin Zhou’s paper looks at the relationship between sports participation, wellbeing and alcohol use among UK students.
Alcohol Research UK welcomes the new guidelines by the UK Chief Medical Officers and calls for a public debate to increase understanding on the levels of risk associated with alcohol consumption.
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The Abstinence Preparation Group (APG) is based on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and aims to help drinkers to regain control over their drinking, initiate lifestyle changes and enhance self-efficacy before they start medically assisted detoxification. Similarly to other CBT interventions, the APG focuses on the reduction of positive expectancies towards drinking, the development of negative expectancies towards drinking, the development of self-efficacy and coping skills in relation to specific high risk situations, and finally the development of overall lifestyle changes compatible with an abstinent way of living.
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A relationship exists between smoking and alcohol consumption where heavy drinkers are also more likely to be highly dependent smokers. Among smokers, trying to quit alcohol consumption is often cited as a reason for relapse. One of the most commonly used stop smoking medicines, varenicline, may also have potential as a treatment for alcohol dependence. Varenicline, which reduces tobacco withdrawal symptoms and the reinforcing aspects of smoking, could also act to modify alcohol reactivity and thus drinking behaviour. It has also been suggested that varenicline might decrease motivation and incentive salience of alcohol by decreasing neural activity in the reward pathways of the brain.
Rapid advances in technology hold particular promise for the field of alcohol research — revolutionizing the way research is conducted and enabling us to design more effective intervention, prevention, and treatment for people with alcohol use disorders. This issue of Alcohol Research: Current Reviews reports on the state of the science and future directions in electronic health (eHealth) technologies and their potential impact on alcohol epidemiology, prevention, and treatment. As an emerging and rapidly evolving transdisciplinary field, eHealth is poised to transform the existing theories of behavioral change and models of behavioral health care. As shown in this issue, eHealth brings real-time in-the-moment monitoring of bodily and cognitive states and enables us to deliver personalized and “just-in-time” intervention.
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