ALL BOOZING IS BAD FOR BRAINS - EVEN SO CALLED MODERATE DRINKERS BRAINS SHRINK
Researchers looked at people's weekly alcohol intake from the
Whitehall II study, which tracks disease and social behaviors in a group of British civil servants for 30 years. University of Oxford and University College London scientists studied how participants fared with regular brain function tests and an MRI.
What they noted was that the people who drank the most had the highest risk of
hippocampal atrophy, a form of brain damage that can impact spatial navigation and can be associated with memory-loss conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia. The heavier drinkers saw a faster decline in language skills and had
poorer white matter integrity, which is crucial to processing thoughts quickly.
Some studies have shown that the brains of heavier drinkers change over time, and not in a good way, but this research suggests that the brains of even moderate drinkers were changing, too. They also had a higher risk of hippocampal atrophy than those who didn't report any drinking at all.
..........................the results of these brain scans and memory tests for moderate and lighter drinkers were not what researchers expected.
"We were surprised that the light to moderate drinkers didn't seem to have that protective effect," said study co-author
Dr. Anya Topiwala, a clinical lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. "These are people who are drinking at levels that many consider social drinkers, so they are not consuming a lot."
Even the heaviest of the drinkers aren't big nightly bingers. The "drank the most" group in this study consumed about 30 units of alcohol a week, with
a unit considered to be 10 milliliters or 8 grams of pure alcohol. A medium glass of wine has about two units of alcohol, and so does a pint of some beers, depending on the alcohol content.
If you do the boozy math, the study's heaviest drinkers had a little more than two medium glasses of wine or two beers every night of the week.
The moderate group was drinking about 14 to 21 units of alcohol per week, or about a medium glass of wine each night, plus a little extra on the weekends.
"perhaps we should all drink a bit less,"
(the light drinking sounds like a lot to me....a LOT)