Good News People! Heavy Drinkers Are Less Likely To Develop Dementia

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Ha! Take that all you ‘drinking is bad for you’ people! Chalk one up for the degenerates.

You can chalk one up for the degenerates because a 30-year study conducted by the University of California has concluded that moderate to heavy drinkers are more likely to live to the age of 85 without dementia than non-drinkers. So while the alcohol may make you forget things in the present, in the future you’ll be sharp as a tack.

The study, which ran from 1984 to 2013, tracked more than 1,000 middle-class white men and women in California. The study followed 1,344 adults, including 728 women and 616 men.

via Daily Mail:

Cognitive health was assessed every four years over the course of the 29-year study, using a standard dementia screening test known as the Mini Mental State Examination.

The researchers found that people who drank ‘moderate to heavy’ amounts of alcohol five to seven days a week were doubly likely to be cognitively healthy than non-drinkers. The study defined moderate, heavy and excessive drinking using gender and age-specific guidelines from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

‘This study is unique because we considered men and women’s cognitive health at late age and found that alcohol consumption is not only associated with reduced mortality, but with greater chances of remaining cognitively healthy into older age,’ said lead author Dr Linda McEvoy.

The best line of the study goes to lead author and graduate student Erin Richard, who said that ‘this study shows that moderate drinking may be part of a healthy lifestyle to maintain cognitive fitness in aging.’