Alcohol and shrinkage

Size is not important they say, mind you it is a comment usually made by people who are in possession of a small implement. There is one body organ however, where size definitely does matter. That organ is the brain and new research has highlighted the lifestyle factors that influence brain size.

The study involved an analysis of 1839 people aged between 34 and 88. These people were assessed on various parameters to establish what life choices, if any, impacted brain size. MRI scans were used to measure brain volume.

The first notable correlation was with alcohol consumption. The subjects were divided into five groups; non drinkers, former drinkers, low drinkers (one to seven standard drinks per week), moderate drinkers (eight to fourteen drinks per week), and high drinkers (more than fourteen drinks per week). The relationship between alcohol and brain size was linear but inverse, that is, the more alcohol people drank, the lower their brain volume.

Other factors to influence brain size were blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and smoking.

People with high blood pressure showed a more rapid worsening of test scores related to decision making due to a faster rate of growth of brain areas damaged due to blood flow.

People with diabetes in middle age experienced brain shrinkage in the hippocampus and smokers lost brain volume overall and had shrinkage in the hippocampus at a faster rate than non-smokers.

Finally, people who were obese in middle age were in the top 25 per cent of people when it came to rate of brain shrinkage.

Shrinkage of the brain is associated with the decline that we equate with ageing. So adjusting your alcohol intake, reducing your blood pressure, cutting your diabetes risk, and losing weight all has an anti-ageing effect on your brain.

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