For years, the common wisdom and science was that a little bit of alcohol wasn’t bad — and even beneficial — for your health: a toast to moderation.
But new research published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine suggests that even light alcohol consumption can increase dementia risk.
The finding comes from data of more than 550,000 adults ages 56 to 72, as well as genetics information from 2.4 million study participants.
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Previous studies generally relied on self-reported alcohol intake ….
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Instead, the researchers employed the next best thing: They used a treasure trove of genomics data culled from 2.4 million people to predict how much people are likely to drink over their lifetime, which allowed them to infer causation.
They found that increasing alcohol intake invariably increased dementia risk: Every threefold increase in drinking prevalence upped lifetime dementia risk by 15 percent. That is, increasing intake from one drink to three drinks per week … was associated with a 15 percent increased risk of dementia.
