The Dark And Bright Sides Of Alcohol

Some lab rats at the Ohio State University summed it up: Researchers “designed a special liquid diet for the rats. One formulation included a low dose of alcohol, comparable to two or three drinks a day for a human, while the other diet included a much higher dose of alcohol, comparable to six or seven drinks a day for a human. A third group of rats was given a liquid diet without alcohol.” In memory tests, rats that consumed moderate levels of alcohol outperformed those given high doses of alcohol or none at all.

These results tie in with French epidemiological studies that found that regions of France with the highest wine consumption tend to have the lowest Alzheimer's risk.

The Dark Side of Alcohol

And then there’s alcoholic dementia, an illness that is, of course, caused by excessive use of alcohol. Binge drinking seems especially dangerous. Finnish investigators found that people who drank more than five bottles of beer or one bottle of wine once a month were more than three times as likely to get dementia.

Alcohol dementia may not cause much memory loss at first. Instead, it often becomes evident by these signs:

– poor planning
– personality change
– poor judgment
– difficulty handling complex situations

But, ultimately, alcohol dementia may be indistinguishable from Alzheimer's.