Researchers Link Eye Color To Higher Risk of Alcoholism
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Do people with a specific eye color run a higher risk of alcoholism or is it just mere coincidence? A new study out of the University of Vermont suggests that the link not only exists, but appears to be a genetic one.
Reporting in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics, the researchers find that among European Americans, those with light-colored eyes—including ones that are green, grey, and brown in the center—have higher rates of alcohol dependency than European Americans with dark brown eyes; that link is strongest in blue-eyed people.
“We still don’t know the reason,” one researcher says in aUniversity of Vermont press release, but they do know that the very genes that determine eye color are situated along the same chromosome as genes that are known to be linked to alcohol dependency.
It’s not the first time the link has been found, and blue eyes also correlate with other attributes, including lower pain tolerance and higher competitiveness, reports Medical Daily.
The researchers say these findings could help better understand the roots of not only alcoholism but other psychiatric illnesses as well.
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I have very blue eyes and I don’t think I am an alcoholic. Pothead maybe but alcoholic nope I only drink when I go out and smoke dope the rest of the time. I am, however, very competitive only because I was raised by a very educated Asian mom who would have killed me for getting the Asian F, that’s anything less than an A+ for you whiteys just so you know 😉
I also have very blue eyes, and I must reluctantly confess there might be something to this, or not, depending on how you “look” at it. LOL. Get it?
I think it has more to do with that gene and I cannot remember what it is called a person has, that causes alcoholism. Next week it will be something different makes you an addict or you can’t eat because whatever reason. I’m gonna keep on doing me and hope I live long enough to be the old woman that says, I smoked two joints everyday, drank water, ate healthy, exercised and that’s why I lived to be 112 🙂
Damn, Mike, I thought your eyes were red last time I saw them. I guess they were just bloodshot huh? Or maybe those were mine. 🙂 🙂
Ha! I do confess to having blue eyes Bill. Of course I’m a teetotaler 😉 😉
I have brown eyes, as do all of my (4) siblings and my father. My mother had blue eyes, as does my husband. None of us is alcoholic.
My husband’s brother also has brown eyes. He’s alcoholic and a drug abuser (clean for over 27 years! YAY).
So clearly there is no tie! Proof by anecdote – the best kind 🙂
(and if you think that I really believe that about anecdotal proof, you clearly don’t know me very well 🙂 )