Light drinking may protect brain function

I stopped drinking a few years back, but I used to love real ale. I always felt a bit guilty, though, as I would do what doctors would describe as binge drinking. I would have two pints of beer within an hour or two and really feel it, and if you do that you are apparently drinking dangerously and are binge drinking. Inebriated, I would sit and love playing my piano for the next hour or so. A grand evening.


In a BCC /Radio 4 documentary about alcohol years ago, a journalist went and visited a professor who studied the effects of alcohol. Alcohol, he said, effected us differently at different times of the day, so two pints of beer at lunchtime would be twice as strong as two drunk in the evening. She, the journalist, asked him if he drank at all, and he said he had two glasses of wine with his evening meal each evening, and then he would go to the pub to play a game of pool with his friends and have two pints of beer. She said to him, did he know this was binge drinking? He retorted, 'Frankly, that's ridiculous'. I agree. I've done more than that, and it can hardly be called binge drinking.


Summary: Light to moderate weekly alcohol consumption during middle age could help preserve brain function as we get older. Compared to non-drinkers, those who had a drink or two a day tended to have better performance on cognitive tests over time.

Neuroscience News

Light drinking may protect brain function