Drinking beer 'better for brain'

Wine is worse for brain than beer, say scientists

Drinking wine is more damaging to the brain than both beer or spirits, scientists have revealed.

According to new research, wine particularly affects the part of the brain connected to memory and spatial awareness, known as the hippocampus. The news contradicts the belief that a daily glass of red wine is actually beneficial to health and will be a blow to the female population with 36% of women drinking wine in pubs, compared to only 21% of men.

The study compared brain scans from diagnosed alcoholics with those from healthy adults. The research showed the hippocampus was up to 10% smaller in those who drank.

One psychiatrist behind the study at Germany's Göttingen University commented: 'This is the first study investigating the impact of the type of preferred beverage on brain-volume shrinkage in patients with alcohol dependence.'

It seems beer should be our preferred beverage, as researchers also found that beer drinkers had the lowest levels of a compound in the blood called homocysteine. Studies have shown the compound is linked to higher rates of heart disease, strokes and dementia.

One assumption is that two ingredients in beer - B vitamins and folate - could help to break down homocysteine.