‘Drinking wine won’t cause dementia’

With scary warnings that just a glass a day can lead to mental health problems, Dr C thinks it’s time to filter out the facts

Recently, we were R told that even those drinking within the guidelines were three times more likely to suffer from dementia than teetotallers. I’m not saying alcohol isn’t damaging, but these headlines are hugely misleading.

When you look at the numbers in detail, you can see how they’ve been skewed to make a good scare story. This study, which tracked 550 people with brain imaging used to explore links between drinking and brain health, takes one thing in isolation – alcohol – but that’s not how life works. There’ll be plenty of other things increasing and limiting your dementia risk every day, from your diet to your family history. You can’t possibly separate all these things out. For example, around half of the people in the study who didn’t drink still showed signs of increased risk of dementia – proving it’s not just alcohol that causes the problem.

unreliable research

Another issue with this study is that it relied on people recalling how much they drink – that’s notoriously unreliable! Either you’re hazy on what you drank, you fib because you’re embarrassed, or maybe you forget someone was topping up your glass. That doesn’t mean we should dismiss this research, but it also doesn’t mean we should all go teetotal. It’s people who drink 30+ units of alcohol a week (think 10 pints or 16 small glasses of 14% ABV wine) who suffer the worst health outcomes, but you could hazard a guess that those people may have a fairly unhealthy lifestyle in general. They may smoke, not exercise regularly, eat a bit of junk food here and there. All those factors contribute to brain health.

Nearly every year studies come out saying that wine is beneficial to your health; in 2015, one found that a molecule in red wine can actually slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s!

reduce the risks

This recent study looks at alcohol broadly, not wine specifically. Red wine drinkers tend to gain lots of health benefits, but you can’t say the same for people drinking sugary alcopops.

We already know that drinking in excess is unhealthy, that’s why we have guidelines. And if you’re worried about dementia risk, there’s plenty you can do to reduce it: eat a heart-healthy Mediterranean-style diet (there’s a link between heart and brain health), so limit sugar and junk and eat lots of fruit and veg, fish, lean meats and good fat. Also exercise regularly to increase blood and oxygen flow in the brain and stay socially active.

Keep calm and carry on, but within the drinking guidelines.