Everything is good in moderation, right?
Not so much, says a new study published in the journal BMJ.
In fact, drinking this common drink in “moderation” (often highly recommended by health experts) can drastically decrease your brain health and cognitive function in a few years.
Many studies show that moderate alcohol intake is beneficial for cardiovascular disease and a wide range of other health conditions.
How about your brain?
Scientists studied data on 550 people collected in the Whitehall II cohort study.
At the beginning of the study, the subjects’ average age was 43 years.
They collected information on people’s alcohol intake and cognitive abilities periodically over 30 years.
They also took multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of their brains at the end of the study.
The researchers divided the participants into three groups
– Light drinkers: 1–6 units of alcohol per week
– Moderate drinkers: 14–21 units of alcohol per week
– Heavy drinkers: more than 30 units of alcohol per week
The brain and cognitive functions of heavy drinkers were worse than those of moderate drinkers, and theirs were, in turn, worse than those of light drinkers.
In fact, there was no difference between the light drinkers and the complete abstainers in brain structure and cognitive abilities.
The surprising finding is that moderate drinking is also bad for the brain.
One medium glass of wine (175 ml) contains two units of alcohol, and so do 24 ounces of beer.
This means that one glass of wine or two beers a day will place you in the category of moderate drinkers, whose alcohol intake is too high for good brain health.
There are ways to counteract this.