Drinking a couple of pints of beer may be something some middle-aged men look forward to everyday after a day's work, but a new study suggests that heavy drinking won't do a person's memory any good. Findings of the study, which were published in the journal Neurology show that middle-aged men who average three or more alcoholic drinks every day, are likely to show signs of memory degeneration and cognitive decline up to six years earlier than men who are light drinkers or those who do not drink at all.
Researchers at University College London tracked the drinking habits of 5,054 men for ten years until the late 1990's and then assessed their mental ability over the next ten years until 2009. The study found that light drinkers and those who didn't drink or stopped drinking showed no changes in cognition while men who had more than 2.5 drinks a day or more, experienced cognitive declines. Heavy drinkers, in particular, showed mental declines up to six years faster than those who drink less.
"Heavy alcohol consumption is known to be detrimental for health, so the results were not surprising . . . they just add that [it's] also detrimental for the brain and the effects can be observed as [early] as 55 years old," study author Severine Sabia, a research associate in the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London, told HealthDay.
A similar Finnish study found that people who drank alcohol frequently have twice the risk of encountering mild cognitive impairments in old age compared to those who drank in moderation. "Our findings are in agreement with previous studies showing that moderate alcohol consumption is probably not deleterious for cognitive outcomes, but they also show that heavy alcohol consumption in midlife is likely to be harmful for cognitive aging, at least in men," the researchers wrote.
The researchers were not able to assess the effects of heavy drinking among women because only a few middle-aged females participated in the research. "Our study focused on middle-aged participants and suggests that heavy drinking is associated with faster declines in all areas of cognitive function in men," Sabia said.
