According to a new study, just a few beers or a glass or two of wine a week can change and age the brain. Scientists have evaluated the data of more than 36,000 people.
A glass of wine with dinner or a beer after work seems to do more damage in the long term than previously thought. Even moderate amounts of alcohol pose risks to the brain. According to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with premature aging and brain shrinkage.
Led by a research team from the University of Pennsylvania, scientists analyzed data from more than 36,000 people from the “UK Biodatabase”. The medical database contains health-related data on hundreds of thousands of British citizens. Among other things, about age, height and gender, but also brain scans. The images allow conclusions to be drawn about changes in the brain. In addition, the persons examined had provided information on their drinking behavior in questionnaires. “The fact that we have such a large sample size allows us to find subtle patterns, even between drinking half a beer and one beer a day,” says Gideon Nave of the University of Pennsylvania.
The more alcohol a person drinks, the more the brain volume decreases
The analysis shows that the more alcohol a person drinks, the more significantly the brain volume is reduced. This shrinkage is comparable to premature aging, because the brain mass also dwindles with age. In the study, a pint of beer (about half a liter) or a large glass of wine (1.75 deciliters) is equivalent to two alcohol units. The researchers found that for a 50-year-old person whose average alcohol consumption went from a small glass of beer a day to a pint a day (from one to two units of alcohol), the brain changes equivalent to two years of brain aging are already occurring. According to the study, this was particularly evident in the reduction in gray and white matter.
“There is some evidence that the effects of alcohol consumption on the brain are exponential,” said lead author Remi Daviet of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So one extra drink a day could have a greater impact than all the previous ones that day.” A small glass of beer a day corresponds to one year’s aging, four glasses a day corresponds to an aging of more than ten years.
Limits for alcohol consumption
The researchers point out that their study design was not designed to prove a causal relationship between alcohol consumption and changes in the brain. In order to form a causal relationship, further investigations are needed, which participants examine repeatedly over time.
There are common limit values for alcohol that indicate the point at which consumption has been shown to increase the health risk. For women it is 12 grams and for men 24 grams of pure alcohol per day, according to the German Center for Addiction Questions. Ten grams of alcohol correspond to 0.2 liters of beer or 0.1 liters of wine. According to this information, anyone who drinks a large beer (half a liter) consumes around 25 grams of pure alcohol. According to the data from the study, that’s two units of alcohol, which, according to the new study, already cause changes in the brain if consumed daily.
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Source: Stern
