Deans' stroke musings: There May Be No Safe Amount of Booze When It Comes to Dementia Risk

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, September 25, 2025

There May Be No Safe Amount of Booze When It Comes to Dementia Risk

Well, I disagree. I'm using bar nights of jazz and trivia to vastly expand my social connections which is what is going to prevent dementia. You can't listen to me; I'm not medically trained. Better stroke recovery from music and better cognition from trivia; so there.

There May Be No Safe Amount of Booze When It Comes to Dementia Risk

Imbibing even the smallest amounts of booze can raise your risk of dementia, according to the largest combined observational and genetic study to date on the subject.

The findings counter previous research showing that light-to-moderate drinking might protect against cognitive decline.

The international team of researchers behind the new study suggests that cutting out drinking altogether may be the best way to minimize the risk of dementia later in life, with increasing levels of alcohol consumption matching an increasing likelihood of developing dementia of any kind.

"Our study findings support a detrimental effect of all types of alcohol consumption on dementia risk, with no evidence supporting the previously suggested protective effect of moderate drinking," write the researchers in their published paper.

The team began by looking at 559,559 adults in the UK and US, aged between 56 and 72 at the start of the study period. The participants filled out questionnaires on their drinking habits, and their health was monitored for up to 15 years afterwards.

This part of the research resulted in a classic U-shaped graph: non-drinkers and heavy drinkers were shown to have the highest risk of dementia. That fits in with some earlier research, and appears to suggest that moderate drinking is associated with the lowest dementia risk.

A higher genetic predisposition to drinking was linked to a higher risk of dementia. (Topiwala et al., BMJ Evid. Based Med., 2025)

But the researchers argue that the protective effect of light drinking doesn't actually exist – that non-drinkers are often heavy drinkers who have quit, or who have cut down on booze because of the early effects of cognitive decline. In other words, the stats are skewed.

To find more evidence, the study also looked at genetic records for 2.4 million people, using Mendelian randomization to analyze drinking in relation to dementia. The approach works by using a genetic predisposition to drinking rather than data on actual drinking habits – which in theory cuts out other factors, such as lifestyle or wealth.

In this part of the analysis, the U shape disappeared. The higher the predicted alcohol consumption, the higher the dementia risk, with no dip for light drinkers who enjoyed the occasional beer or glass of wine.