“I’m very honest when I say no amount of alcohol is good for the brain. When you sit in [the moderate drinking] category, [the scientific literature] shows that you can literally have low-level brain damage. You are killing the neurons in your brain,” Nicola explains, referencing a 2022 1Nature Communications1 review1 . “So, drinking is not good for you,” she expounds.
Unsurprisingly, the impact of alcohol on overall brain function can play into dementia risk as well. In fact, the Lancet updated its dementia prevention review in 2020 to add three new modifiable risk factors of dementia: air pollution, traumatic brain injury, and excessive alcohol consumption. Researchers found that consuming more than 21 units (more on that quantity in a minute) of alcoholic drinks per week increases dementia risk by 17%2.
Cutting back on your drinking is especially beneficial for reducing risk of developing early-onset dementia (the prevalence of which increased 200% between 2013 and 2017), per a 2018 retrospective cohort study conducted in France. Of the 57,353 early-onset dementia cases analyzed by researchers, 38.9% were alcohol-related3 and an additional 17.6% had a coexisting diagnosis of alcohol misuse disorder.
