Drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain, study finds
It's generally accepted that alcohol is fine in small amounts and not so healthy in larger quantities. But a new study from researchers at the University of Oxford suggests that consuming any amount of alcohol can damage your brain.
The research, which is an observational study that hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, analyzed data from 25,378 people who participated in the U.K.’s Biobank study. That data included how much alcohol the participants said they drank, along with scans of their brains.
The researchers discovered that alcohol use was linked to the amount of gray matter in the brain, regions that affect how decisions are made. Specifically, the more people drank, the less gray matter they had — and people who drank any amount of alcohol had less gray matter than those who didn't drink. There were no differences in this impact between people who drank beer, wine and liquor.
"No safe dose of alcohol for the brain was found," the researchers wrote in the conclusion, adding that "moderate consumption is associated with more widespread adverse effects on the brain than previously recognized." The researchers also said that "current 'low risk' drinking guidelines should be revisited to take account of brain effects."
