Too Much Of Alcohol Consumption Can Affect Your Memory

Hit the bottle too hard before you're over the hill and your memory may pay the price: Knocking back more than two drinks a night for 10 years in your middle ages can speed memory loss by up to six years, reports a new study inNeurology.

Researchers from France and England followed the drinking habits of 46-year-olds over the next decade, and then at 56 gave them a memory test. They retested participants twice more a few years later and found that those who had more than two and a half drinks—beer, wine, or liquor—consistently over the 10 years scored worse on tests for memory, attention, and reasoning skills.

Heavy alcohol consumption has been linked to a higher risk of vascular disease, says study author Séverine Sabia, Ph.D. Since your brain has one of the richest networks of blood vessels in your body, inadequate blood flow can keep it from working properly. Additionally, alcohol increases the toxins in your blood, which in turn have a negative effect on your nervous system, causing damage to parts of your brain dealing with cognition.

But if you've spent a few to many nights in your life on a bender, you don't need to stock up on post-its just yet. People who used to drink heavily but went dry saw no deterioration in their memory ability, or attention and reasoning skills. “It's likely that the body might be able to recover from the detrimental effects of alcohol after several years,” says Sabia.

Stick to one to two drinks a night max, she suggests. Men who indulged infrequently—or stuck to less than two glasses—saw the same reassuring results as former drinkers. Plus, all those health benefits of red wine and beer you always hear about peak at one to two glasses a day.

Source:menshealth