Middle-age men who have been drinking an average of three or more drinks daily risk a faster mental decline as they age, according to a new study The Washington Post reported.
Researchers found that over a decade men who drank heavily showed a faster decline in cognitive function than in lighter drinkers. The same effect was not seen in women.
For the study, researchers analyzed 5,000 British civil servants. They found that over the course of 10 years, the added mental decline was "the equivalent of about two extra years of aging for a combined measure of mental abilities like reasoning, and about six years for memory," The Washington Post reported.
Researchers calculated the men's average daily intake of alcohol for the decade up to when they were an average of 56 years old. They tracked the decline in mental abilities over the course of a decade from tests administered every five years.
There were three tests. One tested inductive reasoning. The second test focused on verbal fluency by writing down as many words beginning with letter "S" they could think of in one minute and the last test assessed the participants short-term verbal memory.
Based on the results, researchers found that men consuming 36 grams of alcohol - about 2.5 drinks - or more per day "was associated with faster cognitive decline in all domains" compared to drinking lesser amounts.
Heavy male drinkers also added 5.7 years of mental decline, meaning that a 60-year-old man had the memory loss expected in a 66-year-old, Séverine Sabia told NBCNews.com.
Researchers found no significant difference in cognitive decline between men who drink moderately and men who abstain from alcohol.
Sara Jo Nixon, a substance abuse researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said although that although the study "suggest that middle-aged to young-old individuals do need to pay attention to what their drinking habits have been, and are," it does not prove that alcohol intake was responsible for the mental decline seen in men.
