There Could Be Memory Benefits In Moderate Drinking

Social drinking, in moderation, can actually be beneficial to your heart and your brain. As long as the effects of drinking not impacting you the next day, and there is no harm to your relationships and family life. 

Humans being are highly evolved social animals. Isolation is not in our chemistry, and we can not thrive without human contact for very long without emotional repercussions. Relationships stimulate our brains. As a matter of fact, interacting with others may be the best kind of brain exercise you can do.

According to Dr. Beverly Beuermann-King, people usually like to socialize, and very often these interactions involve drinking of some form of alcoholic beverage. Moderate drinkers may have better health simply because this interaction of connecting with other people helps them to de-stress, and this is great for our brain health.

Having meaningful relationships and a strong support system are vital to our emotional and brain health, say clinical research reports. In one recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health, for example, researchers found that people with the most active social lives had the slowest rate of memory decline. Of course alcohol is not necessary for a social event, but when alcohol is present it does not necessarily spell disaster. The key word is “moderation.”

The potential benefits of moderate alcohol consumption on the heart and stress has been researched, and they have found that it actually fights off memory problems and/or Alzheimer’s disease.

A study published in Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment reviewed work from 19 countries, involving over 365,000 volunteers in 143 studies. The researchers looked at moderate drinking (a maximum of one drink daily) for women and two drinks for men. A standard drink is defined as 1.5 ounces of spirits, 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer.

They were able to find that moderate drinkers in 14 of the 19 countries (including the U.S.) were found to be 23% less likely to develop signs of memory problems or Alzheimer’s disease. “This study is not the final word, but it does provide the most complete picture out there,” says study researcher Michael A. Collins, PhD, of the department of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill.

“Low levels of alcohol may have anti-inflammatory effects on the immune system, heart, and brain,” says Collins. Alcohol is known to lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of inflammation. Research has found that inflammation in the brain is believed to play a big role in Alzheimer’s disease, and has also been implicated in heart disease, stroke, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some cancers.

Exactly how alcohol lowers the inflammation is not yet known. The buzz word is neuro-inflammation, and alcohol, in moderate amounts, may suppress neuro-inflammation. On the other side of the coin, higher levels of alcohol may stimulate it, Collins says.