Learn about why having a “drink to cope” doesn’t work; why human brains shrunk 3,000 years ago; and high heel history. Having a "drink to cope" doesn't actually work, and can even make you feel worse by Steffie Drucker One year on: Unhealthy weight gains, increased drinking reported by Americans coping with pandemic stress. (2021, March 11). One year on: Unhealthy weight gains, increased drinking reported by Americans coping with pandemic stress. Https://Www.apa.org. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/03/one-year-pandemic-stress “Drinking To Cope” Doesn’t Work, Even When We Believe That It Does. (2021, October 20). Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/10/20/drinking-to-cope-doesnt-work-even-when-we-believe-that-it-does/ Wycoff, A. M., Carpenter, R. W., Hepp, J., Piasecki, T. M., & Trull, T. J. (2021). Real-time reports of drinking to cope: Associations with subjective relief from alcohol and changes in negative affect. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 130(6), 641–650. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000684 Human brains shrunk 3,000 years ago, and it may be due to the rise of collective intelligence by Grant Currin When and why did human brains decrease in size 3,000 years ago? New study may have found clues within ants. (2021, October 22). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/932004 DeSilva, J. M., Traniello, J. F. A., Claxton, A. G., & Fannin, L. D. (2021). When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights From Brain Evolution in Ants. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.742639 High Heels Were Originally Meant for Men by Reuben Westmaas originally published July 9, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/high-heels-were-originally-meant-for-men-persuasiv Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about why having a “drink to cope” doesn’t work; why human brains shrunk 3,000 years ago; and high heel history.
Having a "drink to cope" doesn't actually work, and can even make you feel worse by Steffie Drucker
Human brains shrunk 3,000 years ago, and it may be due to the rise of collective intelligence by Grant Currin
High Heels Were Originally Meant for Men by Reuben Westmaas originally published July 9, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/high-heels-were-originally-meant-for-men-persuasiv
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/drinking-to-cope-human-brains-shrank-high-heels-history
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why having a “drink to cope” can actually make you feel worse; why human brains shrunk 3,000 years ago; and the strange history of high heels.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Here’s a familiar scene: you’ve had a tough day, so you pour yourself a drink to unwind. But a bit of booze to take the edge off can quickly turn into a daily habit when you’re stressed. When that stress is prolonged — like, I don’t know, nearly two years into a global pandemic — it can become downright dependence. I mean, really: nearly 1 in 4 Americans reported drinking more alcohol to cope with their stress at the COVID-19 pandemic’s one-year mark.
So the urge to drink when you’re stressed is common. But a new study shows that just doesn’t work. In fact, drinking to cope can actually leave you feeling worse.
Scientists at the University of Missouri recruited 110 participants who reported drinking at least once a week. Almost half had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, a mental illness that makes it more difficult to manage emotions and is linked to drinking problems. The researchers included this group so they could capture as much emotional range and likelihood of drinking as possible.
Participants completed daily diary entries for three weeks. They recorded how much they’d drunk that day and whether they felt negative emotions like jitters or loneliness. If they’d had a drink, they said whether it was to curb those bad feelings or feel more relaxed. They’d also record how much they thought the alcohol helped — and importantly, they’d also rate their actual negative feelings again.
The amount of drinking over the course of the study was all over the map — some only had a single drink for the entire three weeks, others had up to 18, or just under a drink a day. But when it came to the participants’ self-assessments, there was a definite pattern: If they said they were drinking to cope with anxiety or depression, they tended to say it had helped to resolve their unpleasant emotions. But when researchers reviewed participants’ actual emotional scores, the alcohol hadn’t helped. It had no impact on anxiety, and people drinking to cope with depression actually felt worse afterward. That was especially true if they also had Alcohol Use Disorder.
Scientists say that discrepancy represents a placebo effect: Participants who drink to cope expect alcohol to make them feel better, so they believe that it does. But their actual feelings probably stay the same or get worse.
So don’t listen to all those country crooners singing about drinking heartache away. Maybe beer never broke their hearts, but it didn’t heal them, either.
Human brains are big. Really big. Our ancestors started growing larger and larger brains about 2 million years ago. But weirdly, they didn’t stay that way. About 3,000 years ago, human brains got smaller. And to find out why, scientists turned… to ants.
But, lemme back up for a second before I bring in the ant part. Researchers who study human evolution have long been fascinated by the development of our brains. Unfortunately for them, brains aren’t often preserved as fossils. But skulls are. That means a researcher can estimate the size of an ancient human’s brain by measuring the inside of a fossilized skull. The researchers behind this new study used measurements of nearly a thousand skulls. Some of them were fossils and others were modern.
They analyzed that data and found that brain size changed at three points in human history. About 2.1 million years ago, our ancestors’ brains got way bigger. The same thing happened again about 1.5 million years ago. Those shifts fit with what scientists already knew about human evolution. Those bigger-brained humans were eating better diets and living in larger social groups than their ancestors.
It was the third and most recent change that took the researchers by surprise. According to their evidence, human brains got smaller about 3,000 years ago. That means that you and I might have smaller brains than the people who invented writing or domesticated the horse.
But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Researchers think civilization is behind the change. See, it takes a lot of energy to keep a big brain running. That means when food is scarce, you want the smallest brain you can get away with. And when you live in a huge group where you can put your heads together, you don’t have to do quite as much thinking. And neither do ants.
Research in ants has shown that individuals living in large, complex groups tend to have smaller and more efficient brains. One reason is that the labor necessary to keep the colony alive is divided, so individual ants can specialize and no single ant is responsible for making decisions. The researchers behind the study of humans think those patterns offer a window into our own evolutionary history. As societies grew larger and more complex, the demands on individual humans changed. Our more recent ancestors were able to specialize. We also began to share knowledge across a lot of people and even store it outside of our brains through writing. Group decision-making might have played a part as well.
This research is pretty speculative, but it offers an important reminder that bigger isn’t always better — even when it comes to brains.
CODY: History is weird sometimes. And the history of high heels is no exception. It’s so full of twists and turns, we decided to remaster this story we did about it back in 2018. So here it is!
[ASHLEY: Clip 2:41]
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker, Grant Currin, and Reuben Westmaas.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!