Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – Consuming an average of half a liter of beer or a glass of wine a day can trigger a process that reduces the overall volume of the brain, a new study has found. Bad drinks are consumed daily.

On average, 50-year-olds who drank a pint of beer or 6 ounces of wine (two glasses) a day for a month had their brains two years older than those who drank only half a cup of beer.

Those who consumed three units of alcohol (10 milligrams per unit of alcohol or 8 grams of pure alcohol) per day at this age had a decline in both white and gray matter, and their brain age appeared to be three. – Half year old senior.

Studies show that the brains of people who do not consume alcohol and start drinking an average of one unit of alcohol a day are about half the age.

For more information, consuming four units of alcohol a day increases a person’s brain life by more than 10 years.

Remy David, the first author to be an associate professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement, “The more alcohol a person consumes, the worse it becomes.

“The problem with this study is that it only contained information about participants’ drinking a year before brain imaging,” said Emmanuel Jacquito, a wine researcher and professor of health metrology at the University of Washington.

“I think this puts a significant limitation on the study, because overall lifespan alcohol consumption is related to the brain, not just the amount consumed before the brain is photographed,” he added.

He noted that the relationship between alcohol and health is complex and that our understanding of that relationship develops over time, adding that “this study will not help us make any definitive conclusions, but that the study authors have identified areas that need to be addressed.”

Are there any benefits to consuming alcohol?

Doctors thought that moderate alcohol consumption had a health benefit, especially for the heart and brain, but recent research has called into question this assumption.

Numerous studies have found that “healthy” levels of alcohol do not exist, and the World Heart Federation recently released a summary stating that “there is no guarantee that consuming alcoholic beverages is safe for health.”

Jacto explained that consuming small amounts of alcohol is associated with health benefits in some cases, such as heart disease and diabetes, but on the other hand, there are other events that can be harmful, such as road accidents and breast cancer, and the effect is not clear.

“Based on what we now know, the harm or benefit of consuming small amounts of alcohol depends on a person’s health and the risks they pose. Are they more likely to develop heart disease or cancer?”

Brain scan and large probe size

The report analyzed data from more than 36,000 individuals who participated in the UK Biobank study, including in-depth genetic and health information about more than 500,000 middle-aged people living in the UK.

Those in the study provided information on how many drinks they had consumed each week in the previous year, and underwent brain MRI.

The researchers compared their scans with images of the normal aging brain and then controlled for variables such as age, gender, smoking status, socioeconomic status, genetic ancestry and total head size.

“Having such a large sample size allows us to find precise patterns even between half a beer a day and drinking one beer a day,” says Gideon Naif, associate professor of marketing at the Warden School. The University of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

Naif added that having this set of data is like having a microscope or telescope with a very powerful lens.

He told CNN that this study was able to find a more obvious link between alcohol consumption and brain size compared to previous studies.

Nevertheless, he stressed that since the study could not prove a causal relationship between them, the results provide only a correlation.

He noted that this study is the largest research on the topic because it “uses a general demographic model and controls confusion more than before”, and provides more evidence and brings us closer than any previous research. Resolve the dispute.

But this does not stop the study from answering many questions such as a person’s cognitive interaction, Jacquito said.

He continued, “I think there is ample evidence that brain function is rapidly deteriorating among those who do not engage in intellectual stimuli through work or leisure.”

“My main criticism is that the authors overestimate the results of their research and make decisions that are not supported by what is presented in the paper,” he added, indicating that he did not believe the results of the study.