Even moderate drinking may dull the aging brain
People who drink at even moderate levels may see some of their mental skills slip faster as they age, a new study suggests.
The researchers found that those who regularly drank alcohol showed greater brain shrinkage than non-drinkers by old age. They also lost more of their language fluency -- a measure of memory and thinking skills.
And, the effects were seen even among people who drank moderately -- roughly four to seven drinks a week, the researchers found.
The findings do not prove that alcohol was to blame.
But experts said they add to evidence that moderate drinking is not as healthful as many like to believe.
People should be skeptical of the idea that its actually healthy, and treat alcohol with respect, said Tim Stockwell, director of the Center for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada.
Stockwell, who was not involved in this latest study, has done work examining a popular notion -- that drinking, in moderation, is good for the heart.
Many studies have found that moderate drinkers tend to have lower heart disease rates than heavy drinkers and non-drinkers alike.
But, in his own research analyzing those studies, Stockwell and his colleagues have found critical flaws. For one, the definition of non-drinker often creates problems. In many studies, it includes former drinkers who likely quit for health reasons -- whereas people who continued to drink as they aged were probably healthier to begin with.
And while the latest study cannot pin the blame on alcohol, it avoided some of the pitfalls of other research, Stockwell said.
It measured the cumulative effects of alcohol across the lifespan, with six measures of drinking over 30 years, he said. This largely avoids the kinds of bias we highlight in our research.
The findings were published June 6 in the BMJ. Theyre based on 550 British adults who were 43 years old, on average, at the outset. Over the next 30 years, they reported on their health and lifestyle habits every five years or so. They also took standard tests of memory and other mental skills.
Toward the end of the study, they underwent MRI brain scans. Overall, the study found, people who regularly drank showed more atrophy in a brain region called the hippocampus, versus those whod consistently been occasional drinkers or abstainers.
Hippocampus size is linked to memory, explained lead researcher Dr. Anya Topiwala. Atrophy in that brain region, she said, is one of the early changes seen in Alzheimers disease.
However, there can be other causes of hippocampal atrophy, stressed Topiwala, a clinical lecturer in psychiatry at Oxford University, in England.
So these findings cannot actually show whether drinkers face any greater risk of dementia, she said.
Overall, the study found, moderate drinkers were more than three times as likely as abstainers to show abnormal levels of atrophy in the right hippocampus. That included people who averaged 14 to 21 units of alcohol each week. That is roughly equivalent to four to six pints of beer, or five to seven glasses of wine, a week, according to Topiwalas team.
Similarly, both moderate and heavier drinkers showed a faster decline in language fluency over 30 years -- a 14 percent to 17 percent greater reduction, versus abstainers.
HealthDay
