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Home > Blogs > Uncorked > Archives > 2007 > April > 20 > Entry
Wine drinkers think more clearly than teetotalers, study suggests
Consider this: When we wine drinkers think about where we’re going to go this weekend to taste wine, we might just be thinking more clearly than our non-drinking peers.
A Columbia University study has found that those of us who consume alcohol have greater cognitive ability — as a group, we appear to suffer less “cognitive decline” as we grow older — than those who never drank, according to this Wine Spectator story on the study, the results of which were published first in the journal Neuroepidemiology.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. C’mon, it’s the Wine Spectator, which has an obvious vested interest in how alcohol-related health studies are reported, right?
Well, just to be sure I wasn’t misleading the readers of Uncorked in linking to the Spectator’s story, I first emailed the WS article to the lead researcher in the study — Dr. Clinton Wright, assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University’s Division of Stroke and Critical Care — and asked him whether it was an accurate portrayal of his research.
Here’s what Dr. Wright had to say:
I think the results are well presented, emphasizing that no one population-based study provides proof. Alcohol abuse is a major public health issue and heavy intake is associated with all sorts of physical ailments, ranging from social to psychiatric to liver problems. Therefore, I was careful to point out that the benefit seen in the highest drinking category should be discounted since the sample size is small.
The other point is that we presume people were not drinking at the time of the telephone cognitive test and our results do not imply that alcohol improves cognitive function directly (e.g. If you do a shot of tequila you think better). Rather, we hypothesize that alcohol may work against other disease processes over time. Other studies would be needed to examine such relationships.
Clinton Wright, M.D., M.S., The Neurological Institute, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University
A very balanced, measured response from a researcher who obviously doesn’t want his research to be used to justify or rationalize destructive behavior. And kudos to the Spectator for a straight-up report.
For those who’d like to read the full report for themselves, well, click here for the full article, which appears in the journal Neuroepidemiology.
And be assured that your one small glass of wine, well … while it may cloud your judgment, it apparently will not cloud your thinking.
Cheers!
Mark Fisher
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Comments
By Greg
April 20, 2007 9:20 AM | Link to this
Remember the joke, “when the parent/teacher put a worm in alcohol the worm died. When asked what that proved, the kid/student said ‘it proves that if you drink alcohol you won’t have worms’” I guess the kid was more right than he knew.
By JIm T.
April 20, 2007 6:38 AM | Link to this
Interesting stuff. Now what did I do with that old college statistics textbook? Oh wait - I think I sold it and used the money for alcohol.