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Consuming just a glass of wine or pint of beer each night in middle age may see your brain age by two years, a study claims.
Researchers analysed MRI scans of 36 000 adults to calculate their brain size, and then compared the alcohol intake of the volunteers.
Their results suggested a 50-year-old who drank one unit a day – the equivalent of half a lower-strength lager beer – would have a brain six months older than if they kept off the booze.
In the US, University of Pennsylvania researchers found the link grew even stronger the more people drank.
READ: Do South Africans have an alcohol problem? Experts weigh in
Middle-aged adults who consumed two units a day – one medium-sized glass of red or white wine – had a brain two and a half years older, the data imply.
Increasing the number of units to four per day resulted in an extra 10 years of ageing compared with abstinence.
Professor Remi Daviet, one of the researchers, said:
The findings mark another twist in the evolving field about the risks of alcohol consumption, and question claims that low-level drinking can have benefits.
The study, published in Nature Communications, tracked people’s drinking habits using data from the UK biobank. Lead author Professor Gideon Nave, a neuroscientist, said: “Having this dataset is like having a microscope or a telescope with a more powerful lens.
“You get a better resolution and start seeing patterns and associations you couldn’t before. The fact we have such a large sample size allows us to find subtle patterns – even between drinking the equivalent of half a beer and one beer a day.”
They checked MRI scan records of patients aged between 40 and 69 to see how much white and grey matter they had in the brain. One scan was used for each individual. Grey matter is the main part of the brain that processes information, whereas white matter acts as the line of communication.
Participants answered a survey that asked them about how much they drank, from nothing to four units a day.
READ: Booze ban is a misdiagnosis of South Africa's alcohilsm problem
The team took into account other factors that may have skewed the results, including age, height, gender, smoking status, income, genetic ancestry and where people lived. They used statistical models to calculate how increasing drinking would affect the brain age of a 50-year-old.
Going from one unit a day to two saw their brains age a further two years.
And increasing from two units to three units a day saw brains age another three and a half years on top of that. – MailOnline
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