Those of us who drink alcohol already know it’s not one of our healthiest habits, but new research suggests just how little it takes to do damage. Think you’re okay because you’re only a light to moderate drinker? According to a new study, just having one drink a day could make your brain smaller … literally.
A pint of beer or a glass of wine a night could start to shrink the overall volume of the brain, according to the new study. And the damage gets worse as alcohol intake increases. Researchers analyzed data and looked at brain scans of more than 36-thousand “generally healthy middle-aged and older adults” and found a link between reduced brain volume and drinking less than one alcohol unit a day.
- On average, folks at age 50 who drink a pint of beer or a six-ounce glass of wine (two alcohol units) a day in the last month had brains that appeared two years older than those who only drank half a pint (one unit of alcohol.)
- The brains of 50 year olds who drink three alcohol units a day had less of both gray and white matter in their brains that looked like their brains were three-and-a-half years older.
- The study finds that the brains of nondrinkers who started drinking an average of one alcohol unit a day showed the equivalent of a half a year of aging.
- To compare, drinking four alcohol units a day aged a person’s brain by over 10 years.
"It's not linear,” says study author Remi Daviet, assistant professor of marketing in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It gets worse the more you drink." And Gideon Nave, another study author and faculty member at Penn’s Wharton School adds, “the people who can benefit the most from drinking less are the people who are already drinking the most.”
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