Drinking Speeds Mental Health Decline

And yet another reason to stop drinking.... I suspect I take after my maternal grandmother's family and both my grandmother and her mother suffered from dementia. You'd think my present self would be eager to look out for my future self.

Yet more bad news for drinkers: As little as one glass of wine or beer a night may accelerate mental deterioration later in life. Researchers analyzed data from a British study that tracked 550 men and women for 30 years. The subjects were tracked for alcohol intake and monitored for brain structure and function. The researchers found that those who drank moderately, consuming about five to eight drinks each week, were three times more likely than the nondrinkers to suffer from shrinkage in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory and learning. Shrinkage in this region is associated with dementia, and the more people drank, the worse their mental decline. The moderate drinkers also performed worse on verbal fluency tests used to assess language and executive function. “These findings raise a question mark over the safety of current U.S. alcohol guidelines,” study author Anya Topiwala tells CBSNews.com. “These are people who are drinking at levels that many consider social drinkers.”

Taken from the June 23, 2017 edition of The Week Magazine.