Drinking Any Amount Of Alcohol Can Damage Your Brain, Claims Study

There is no safe amount of consuming alcohol, as data sheds light on poor brain health associated with regular drinking, reveals a novel study.

Getty Images

Also Read: Drinking Alcohol During COVID-19 Lockdown Can Do More Harm Than Good, WHO Claims

The study that¡¯s yet to be peer-reviewed says that alcohol consumption has shown to impact brain volume with heavy drinkers poorly affecting their brain health.

This is based on data from the UK Biobank -- a comprehensive database designed to help researchers decode genetic and environmental factors that cause the development of certain diseases in their body.

This study looked at data from 25,378 participants like age, sex, education, self-reported alcohol consumption, brain size and health from MRI scans, along with data about hospital and outpatient visits as well as memory tests.

Researchers saw a strong association between higher volume of alcohol consumption and lower grey matter density. Alcohol contributed to 0.8 percent change in grey-matter volume despite keeping biological and behavioural characteristics into consideration.

In case you were thinking 0.8 percent isn¡¯t a significant number, but according to Anya Topiwala, the lead researcher of this study, the contribution of alcohol is larger than smoking, or BMI.

Also Read: Binge Drinking Increased 19% With Every Week Of Lockdown, Says New Study

Researchers also discovered prominent negative associations with alcohol consumption and integrity of white matter -- the brain fibres that hold billions of neurons that form the grey matter. Moreover, high blood pressure, high BMI and other conditions made a negative association between alcohol and brain health stronger.

Getty Images

Also Read: Alcohol Abuse Can Reduce 24-28 Years From Life Span, Study Finds

Moreover, researchers also found that all kinds of alcohol impacted the brain and the choice of drink didn¡¯t reduce this impact, quashing claims that wine is a better, and healthier alternative than other forms of alcohol.

Topiwala concluded stating, ¡°If you look at who is moderately drinking, at least in the UK, they are better educated, wealthier people that would do much better on a memory test, just because of who they are than people that are less educated.¡±