New research suggests drinking in midlife can lead to memory problems down the road.
The findings, published in the July 30 edition of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, showed middle-aged adults with a history of drinking problems were more than twice as likely suffer from sever memory impairment later in life, the University of Exeter reported.
The research team looked at the association between a history of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and the onset of cognitive and memory impairment in 6,542 mid-life adults born between the years of 1931 and 1941. The participants were first assessed in 1992 and were followed up every year until 2010.
Participants who were determined to have a history of AUDs by the CAGE questionnaire were twice as likely to experience memory impairment. The questionnaire asked: "have you ever felt you should cut down on your drinking?; have people annoyed you by [criticizing] your drinking?; have you ever felt bad or guilty about your drinking?; have you ever had a drink first thing in the morning to steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover (eye-opener)?"
"We already know there is an association between dementia risk and levels of current alcohol consumption - that understanding is based on asking older people how much they drink and then observing whether they develop problems. But this is only one part of the puzzle and we know little about the consequences of alcohol consumption earlier in life. What we did here is investigate the relatively unknown association between having a drinking problem at any point in life and experiencing problems with memory later in life," said study leader Doctor Iain Lang.
The researcher said the finding does not mean people should abstain from alcohol altogether, a glass of red wine every now and then can lower the risk of dementia.
"When we talk about drinking too much, the media often focuses on young people ending up in A&E after a night out. However, there's also a hidden cost of alcohol abuse given the mounting evidence that alcohol abuse can also impact on cognition later in life. This small study shows that people who admitted to alcohol abuse at some point in their lives were twice as likely to have severe memory problems, and as the research relied on self-reporting that number may be even higher," said Doctor Doug Brown, Director of Research and Development at Alzheimer's Society.
