Researchers found alcohol consumption within US national safety guidelines was linked to a loss of brain tissue akin to accelerated ageing.
, as the connections between parts of the brain show up as white branches on a brain scan.
The team at Penn found reductions in overall brain volume — including gray and white matter — associated with various levels of drinking. To put that loss in context, they compared it to the changes that typically occur with ageing. Going from an average of zero drinks per day to one a day was associated with the equivalent of two years of ageing in a a sample of 50-year-olds. The relationship appears to be roughly exponential, authors noted, as going from zero drinks to four was linked to more than 10 years of brain ageing.The levels of alcohol consumption linked to brain changes were within national guidelines for drinking safely, and some of the study authors are prompting a second look at the standards.
As for the few drinks a week crowd, having less than a drink a day on average was linked to minimal brain tissue loss, or about half a year of ageing. "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,"