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One Drink Daily May Drop Risk of Mental Decline
Moderate Alcohol Consumption Helps Women With Mental Skills
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD
on Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Jan. 19, 2005 -- Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may help women stay mentally sharp as they age.
"Our data suggest that in women, up to one drink per day does not impair cognitive function and may actually decrease the risk of cognitive decline," say the researchers, who included Meir Stampfer, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
The finding appears in The New England Journal of Medicine's Jan. 20 edition. It's based on the Nurses' Health Study, which has followed 120,000 female nurses for almost 30 years.
Stampfer and colleagues focused on more than 12,400 Nurses' Health Study participants. The women were 70 to 81 years old. The researchers collected information about the women's alcohol intake as part of a food questionnaire every two to four years, starting in 1980. They asked the women how often on average they drank beer, wine, or liquor during the previous year.
Just over half were nondrinkers (51%). For those who drank alcohol, most were moderate drinkers, defined as having about one drink per day. Only 5% of the women reported drinking one to two drinks daily.
Drinking and Thinking:
The women's thinking was quizzed via telephone. In one test, they named as many animals as possible in a minute. They also reversed an increasingly long series of numbers and recalled details from text read to them. Two years later, the tests were repeated.
The study shows that older women who consumed up to one drink per day performed better than nondrinkers. They also maintained more of their mental sharpness, and had a smaller risk of a decline in mental skills seen during the period when the two tests were performed.
Drinking more than one drink daily didn't help. "There were no significant associations between higher levels of drinking and the risk of cognitive impairment or decline," say the researchers.
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