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Study reveals how many alcoholic drinks it takes to start having negative impact on your brain
The relationship between drinking and your brain health is not a good one. Heavy drinking is proven to cause brain alterations and also lead to cognitive impairments. However, the latest study has shown that even one alcoholic drink a day can reduce the size of your brain.
A study published in 2022 has stated that consuming alcoholic drinks even at the most modest levels poses a great risk to our brains. Research led by the University of Pennsylvania states that a few glasses of beer or wine a week could reduce a person’s overall brain mass.
Research shows drinking reduces brain size
The research published in the journal Nature Communications studied over 36,000 generally healthy middle-aged to older adults from the UK Biobank. It proved that even moderate levels of alcohol intake, such as one to two daily alcohol units, altered the drinker’s brain structure.
Penn Today explains, that one alcohol unit is about half a beer a day, while two units is a pint of beer or a glass of wine. Even one to two units of alcohol consumption a day causes changes in the brain that are equivalent to aging two years and show significant changes in the brain’s volume. However, going from two to three alcohol units a day increases ageing three and a half years.
One of the study’s authors, Gideon Nave, said, “The fact that 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.”
A few studies in the past have suggested that moderate levels of alcohol consumption don’t have much impact. Some even suggested that light alcohol consumption has benefits in older adults.
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These earlier studies lacked large datasets. However, researchers have now used the genetic and medical information of half a million British middle-aged and older adults provided by UK Biobank. They even looked at the MRI scans to study the white and gray matter volume across the brain.
Study’s findings contradict government guidelines
These findings contrast with scientific and governmental guidelines on safe drinking limits, says one of the study’s authors, Henry Kranzler.
He notes how the�National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism�states that women can consume an average of no more than one drink per day.
The limits for men are set at two drinks per day. However, this exceeds the consumption level that the study associates with a decrease in brain volume.
The study states that going from zero to one alcohol unit didn’t cause much change to brain volume. In contrast, going from one to two or two to three units a day caused noticeable reductions in both gray and white matter.
Cases of alcohol-related deaths have increased in the US
Statista notes that the�death rate due to alcohol-related liver cirrhosis has steadily increased over the past few decades in the US. In 2000 the rate was 4.3 deaths per 100,000 while, in 2019, it grew to 7.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
For the unversed, cirrhosis is�a condition in which a person’s liver becomes permanently scarred and completely damaged. This prevents their liver from working normally. As the condition worsens, a person’s liver starts to fail.
Moreover, alcohol use has also been linked to various forms of cancer such as female breast cancer, liver cancer, and colon and rectum cancer.
