VITAL SIGNS: OUTCOMES
VITAL SIGNS: OUTCOMES; Raising a Toast to the Brain's Health
By JOHN O'NEIL
Published: February 5, 2002
Moderate alcohol consumption may offer some protection to the brain as well as the heart, a new study published in The Lancet suggests.
In the study, researchers from Erasmus University Medical School in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, tracked almost 8,000 men and women 55 and older for six years, monitoring their consumption of food and beverages. At the end of that time, exams found that people who had consumed one to three drinks a day (whether beer, wine or spirits) were half as likely to have developed dementia, the article said.
The gap was even bigger when the researchers focused on vascular dementia, the deterioration of brain function linked to damage of the arteries that supply the brain with oxygen.
Whatever it is about alcohol that reduces risk of stroke and heart disease is also helping the brain by improving the functioning of the circulatory system, the researchers speculated.
The protective effects against dementia disappeared with higher levels of drinking, they found.
Despite the potential gains with moderate alcohol consumption, the study's lead researcher, Dr. Monique M. B. Breteler, said in an interview that the authors did not recommend alcohol consumption as a preventive measure.
In fact, Dr. Breteler said, they prefer to emphasize that high alcohol intake is associated with brain damage and alcohol dementia.
Drawing (Illustrations by Stuart Goldenberg)