Daily HealthBeat Tip

Drinking and thinking

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Drink too much, and your thinking gets fuzzy. But the opposite may be true when you drink moderately. One study finds the ability to think tends to be better in women who have a drink or two a day.

Clinton Wright of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York compared women’s drinking habits with performance on a test of thinking ability. His work, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health, was in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

Wright found a 20 percent improvement among the moderate drinkers. But:

"Our findings require confirmation in studies with long-term follow-up. I would say that, if you are a woman older than 40 who drinks moderately, this study does not suggest you should change your behavior." (11 seconds)

Wright studied too few men to talk about them.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 17, 2006

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