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Wobbly walking and clumsy moves are classic signs that someone's been drinking, and a new study suggests balance problems can afflict heavy drinkers for years after they sober up.
Researchers at Neurobehavioral Research Inc., in Honolulu, compared the balance abilities and gaits of diagnosed alcoholics who had been sober for several weeks, those who had been sober for an average of seven years, and people with no history of alcohol dependence.
Each participant was put through a three-part test "similar to the things that might be done in field sobriety tests," said Dr. George Fein, principal investigator for the study published today (Sept. 15) in the journal in
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.The volunteers were first screened for recent drug and alcohol use, then asked to perform a series of balance tests such as standing heel-to-toe with their arms folded across the chest for 60 seconds, standing on one leg, or walking along a line. Each test was repeated with the volunteers' eyes closed.
Of the more than 200 volunteers, the 70 recently sober ones - who had not had alcohol for six to 15 weeks - performed the worst. But in tasks with their eyes closed, the 82 long-sober volunteers also performed noticeably worse than the 52 people who had never been alcoholics. (The researchers controlled for the effect of age on balance.)
"There's an 80 to 90 percent recovery, but there's still some residual effects," said Fein, the senior scientist and lab director at the company.
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