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Comment by garyrob | Hacker News Reader

There is reason to think red wine, with its unique combination of resveratrol, phenolic acids, and flavonoids, might be an exception to that. For example, the conclusion of a meta-analysis of 12 studies on the subject says: "This study may show a protective effect of wine consumption against cognitive decline. However, it would be important for future research to differentiate the types of wine within consumption." The paper contains a conflict of interest statement declaring no conflicts of interest.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.86305...

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Yes, this is interesting research. If I was going to drink again, it would be limited to red wine and beer (which contains other beneficial compounds). Personally I just take pterostilbene, which is structurally similar to resveratrol and has similar health benefits but is much more bioavailable.

Cognitive decline and dementia are multifactorial, and with alcohol consumption there are trade-offs between neuronal death, potential improvements in vascular function, and other things known and as yet unknown.

Here's an interesting recent finding from a study of 20K BioBank participants: "Alcohol consumption above 7 units weekly associated with higher brain iron. Iron accumulation represents a potential mechanism for alcohol-related cognitive decline."

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Thanks for the mention of pterostilbene which I hadn't heard of before. Will check it out. And for the brain iron article.

May I suggest that, if you have't already, you get a 23andme. "While light alcohol consumption has been associated with a decreased risk of AD in general [127], this relationship does not appear to hold in ApoE4 carriers. Consumption of any amount of alcohol may increase the risk of AD[Alzheimer's disease] for ApoE4 carriers [128,129,130]. In one study, both light and moderate alcohol consumption were associated with improvement in learning and memory for non-carriers, but with a decline in learning and memory for carriers [129]. Other studies found that ApoE4 carriers who consumed alcohol one or more times per month had a higher risk of AD than those who never consumed alcohol [128] and the risk of AD for carriers increased with increasing amounts of alcohol consumption [130] These data suggest that alcohol consumption should be limited, especially in ApoE4 carriers." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073598/

Thank you, that's super interesting information I wasn't aware of. I did get 23andMe back in 2009 and was able to locate the ApoE4 SNP. For anyone with 23andMe or WGS etc. and wants to do the same, look up rs7412 - the C/C combination is "normal", while one T increases your AD risk by 3x and two Ts by 10x.

As it turns out, I do have one T, so I have another really good reason to avoid alcohol entirely - and also to take krill oil, quercetin, resveratrol/pterostilbene, D3, K2, the Bs, and lithium (the recommendations from the study you linked).

"While light alcohol consumption has been associated with a decreased risk of AD in general [127], this relationship does not appear to hold in ApoE4 carriers. Consumption of any amount of alcohol may increase the risk of AD for ApoE4 carriers [128,129,130]." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073598/

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