A new analysis of alcohol consumption and brain volume found that drinking even a glass of wine or one beer a day was linked to a brain-aging effect.
Contrary to past research suggesting that a few drinks a week could boost word recall,, the latest study of booze and the brain concluded that even light-to-moderate drinking could be connected to later cognitive decline.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania considered data from more than 36,000 middle-aged and older adults — about double the size of similar studies — who shared health information with the UK Biobank, including lifestyle surveys and brain scans.
They found that the more individuals reported drinking, the stronger the association with loss of brain matter, according to the paper published in Nature Communication. Each unit of alcohol, or every half a drink, added to a person’s daily average was linked to a greater loss of tissue.
While the study did not look to prove a cause-effect relationship, the authors said heavy drinkers could benefit most from taking note of this concerning trend.
“One additional drink in a day could have more of an impact than any of the previous drinks that day,” Remi Daviet, co-author of the study, said in a press release. “That means that cutting back on that final drink of the night might have a big effect in terms of brain aging.”
Parts of the brain die as you age
It’s normal to lose your marbles a bit as you age, and that’s reflected in the brain’s physiology.
Studies have shown how normal cognitive decline is accompanied by a loss of gray matter, the parts of the brain that do the bulk of information processing. The rest of the brain is referred to as white matter, as the connections between parts of the brain show up as white branches on a brain scan.
