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This is a large study of 1,839 adults whose average age is 60, participating in the Framingham Offspring Study between 1999 and 2001. They were asked about their alcohol intake, ranging from none to more than 14 drinks a week.

This study contradicts others which have associated, for instance, red wine in moderate amounts, with health benefits.

This study does support others which have concluded that women process alcohol differently than men. Smaller amounts have a greater effect. In this study, the moderate drinking women had more brain shrinkage than men who drank the same amount.

Washington Post

“The more alcohol you drink, the more your brain shrinks, a new study has found.

“The take-home message is that, if you drink a lot, you’re going to hurt your brain,” said Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. “This is something we knew, but this is a huge study that quantifies that.”

“It’s not surprising that alcohol would cause shrinkage of the brain. That kind of thing has been observed in animal models and smaller studies,” Miranda added. “The surprising thing is that they [the study authors] showed that even low levels of drinking are not protective, as people had seen in other cases.”

“The findings are published in the October issue of the Archives of Neurology.”

…”Alcohol had no protective affect on the normal, age-related shrinkage in brain volume, the researchers found.

“To the contrary, the more a person drank, the more their brain volume diminished. This relationship was somewhat more pronounced in women, although women tended to be lighter drinkers.”

Source:  Washington Post/HealthDayNews, October 13, 2008

Citation Source:  Archives of Neurology, October, 2008