Daily Drink Improves Thinking In Older Women

A drink a day may keep dementia away. That's the conclusion of a new study that found that older women who had one alcoholic drink a day had a 20 percent reduced risk of cognitive impairment, compared to women who abstained. This small benefit may translate into bigger benefits later in life. "A decent proportion of women we see who are having more memory changes than other women will go on to get dementia," said senior study author Francine Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "If alcohol at moderate levels is helping to prevent some changes in memory today, that most likely will translate 10 years from now into them being less likely to develop dementia," she added. The findings appear in the Jan. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.