Moderate Alcohol Consumption May Delay Dementia
Ok, with this post, I am not in any way advocating alcoholism, but a new study published in the journal Neurology suggests that people with mild cognitive impairment who had up to one drink of alcohol a day, mostly wine, developed dementia at an 85 percent slower rate than people with mild cognitive impairment who never drank alcohol.
“While many studies have assessed alcohol consumption and cognitive function in the elderly, this is the first study to look at how alcohol consumption affects the rate of progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia,” said study authors Vincenzo Solfrizzi, MD, PhD, and Francesco Panza, MD, PhD, with the Department of Geriatrics at the University of Bari, in Bari, Italy. “The mechanism responsible for why low alcohol consumption appears to protect against the progression to dementia isn’t known. However, it is possible that the arrangement of blood vessels in the brain may play a role in why alcohol consumption appears to protect against dementia. This would support other observations that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may protect the brain from stroke and vascular dementia.”
One drink, guys. One. More than one per day did not show the same benefit.
Tags: aging, alcohol, Alzheimers-Disease, antioxidant, dementia, diet, functional-food, health, health-food, Healthy Eating, nutraceuticals, nutrition, wineRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Healthy Beverages, ~Healthy Aging, ~Mental Health
3 opinions for Moderate Alcohol Consumption May Delay Dementia
almost vegetarian
May 25, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Extremely interesting. I wonder if there is some sort of tie-in with the glass-of-red-wine / French-don’t-get-as-many-heart-attacks paradox. Would be interesting to know.
Cheers.
Oscar
May 29, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I’m with moderation. I believe that all of our food that we eat are good for us as long as we take it moderately.
Pat
May 31, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I’m with moderation. As long as we eat and drink in moderation, I believe that there is nothing wrong with the food and drinks that we take in. We just have to learn how to say enough.
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