Middle-aged and older people increase their consumption from half a glass of wine a day to one glass, experience changes and shrinkage in their brains that equate to about two extra years of aging, according to a new U.S. scientific study, the first to make this correlation. Drinking even more alcohol on a daily basis is associated with an even more extensive impact on the brain.
It was already known that people who drink heavily experience cognitive decline due to alterations in the size and structure of their brain. But the new study shows that even levels of drinking that most people consider safe e.g. a few beers or a few glasses of wine a week can actually pose risks to the brain and therefore the mind.
Researchers from the Universities of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, led by Professor Rémy Daviet, who published the paper in the journal Nature Communications, analysed 36 brain MRIs.678 middle-aged and elderly people, correlating their white and grey matter with the frequency of alcohol consumption (from zero to more than four glasses a day).
It was found that those who drank an average of half a glass a day showed no brain differences from those who drank no alcohol at all. But those who drank one glass had less brain volume and fewer brain connections than those who drank one, those who drank two glasses a day had less brain volume than those who drank one, and so on.
"The more you drink, the worse things get," Daviet said. "Our findings contradict scientific and government guidelines to date on safe drinking limits," said researcher Hanrri Crunchler."
Other research in the past has concluded that moderate drinking has no effect or may even benefit the brains of older people, which the new research does not seem to confirm. The researchers estimated that even half a beer a day equates to an extra year of brain ageing, while four drinks a day equates to a brain at least ten years older.
"An additional drink a day may have a greater impact than any previous drink that day. This means that giving up the last drink of the evening can have a big positive impact in terms of brain aging," Daviet said.
Source: Proto Thema
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