Drinking lots found to shrink the brain

Excessive drinking can shrink the brain, according to a new study. Research by American scientists found that people who drank more than 14 units of alcohol a week had an average 1.6 per cent reduction in the ratio of brain volume to skull size compared to non-drinkers.

The study involved scanning the brains of 1,839 people aged 34 to 88. Those scanned were split into categories – non-drinkers, low drinkers (consuming 1-7 units of alcohol a week), moderate drinkers (8-14 units a week) and high drinkers (more than 14 units a week).

The results showed that brain volume decreased 0.25 per cent on average for every increase in drinking category. A 1.25 per cent decrease is equivalent to one to two years’ normal ageing. The study also found that women in their seventies seemed to be most affected by large amounts of alcohol.