--- title: Alcohol Linked To Lower Risk of Death for Brain Disease description: For people with early Alzheimer's disease, drinking about one cocktail was linked to a lower risk of dying over the three-year study period canonical: https://time.com/4144323/alcohol-alzheimers-disease/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-12-10T23:30:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T13:16:19.360Z article:section: Health og:title: Here's More Good Health News For Drinkers og:description: For people with early Alzheimer's disease, drinking about one cocktail was linked to a lower risk of dying over the three-year study period og:url: https://time.com/4144323/alcohol-alzheimers-disease/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb71ca1056ba6a07c/69878156f887dc32e4e8a59d/time-50-healthiest-foods-red-wine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1707 og:image:height: 960 og:image:alt: healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, red wine, alcohol og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's More Good Health News For Drinkers twitter:description: For people with early Alzheimer's disease, drinking about one cocktail was linked to a lower risk of dying over the three-year study period twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb71ca1056ba6a07c/69878156f887dc32e4e8a59d/time-50-healthiest-foods-red-wine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's More Good Health News For Drinkers > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 10, 2015 11:30 PM UTC  Danny Kim for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 10, 2015 11:30 PM UTC Scientifically speaking, it’s been a good year for drinkers. In October, [one of the most rigorous studies ](http://time.com/4070762/red-wine-resveratrol-diabetes/)to date showed that when people with type-2 diabetes drank a nightly glass of wine with dinner, they had healthier cholesterol levels. Now, a new study [published](http://bmjopen.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-007851) in the journal _BMJ Open_ looks at people with a different disease—mild Alzheimer’s—and found that moderate alcohol consumption was associated with a lower risk of death. “It came as a surprise,” says the paper’s senior author Frans Boch Waldorff, a professor in the Department of Public Health at University of Southern Denmark. By now, it’s known that people who drink moderately—that’s one to two drinks per day according to some health groups—have a reduced risk of death from coronary disease. But could alcohol, a killer of brain cells, possibly benefit people with brain disease? “We thought perhaps if you had a brain disease, you would not tolerate alcohol in the way of people without brain disease.” The researchers used data from the Danish Alzheimer’s Intervention Study (DAISY), which followed people with mild Alzheimer’s disease for three years. Among the data from the 321 Danish people in the study was information about how much they drank, reported by their caregivers. The authors didn’t differentiate between different types of alcohol. **MORE**: [What Drinking Does To Your Body Over Time](http://time.com/3943137/what-drinking-does-to-your-body-over-time/) Even after controlling for factors including age, sex, cognitive functioning, quality of life, smoking and education, the researchers found that consumption of roughly 2-3 drinks per day was associated with a 77% lower risk of dying over the three-year study period, compared to those who drank one or fewer drinks per day. That’s a significant decrease in mortality. But since study wasn’t designed to determine causes, it raises more questions about the effects of alcohol than answers. Perhaps the protective benefit associated with alcohol actually comes from having a strong social network or a better quality of life, Waldorff speculates. More research is needed, and in future studies, Waldorff wants to look at whether alcohol consumption is also associated with happiness in the last period of life, or if alcohol influences cognitive decline. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4144323/alcohol-alzheimers-disease/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4144323/alcohol-alzheimers-disease/"},"headline":"Here's More Good Health News For Drinkers","datePublished":"2015-12-10T23:30:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T13:16:19.360Z","description":"For people with early Alzheimer's, moderate drinking was linked to a lower risk of dying over the three-year study period","url":"https://time.com/4144323/alcohol-alzheimers-disease/","keywords":["Research","Beer","Alcohol","wine","Alzheimer's","Alzheimer's Disease"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb71ca1056ba6a07c/69878156f887dc32e4e8a59d/time-50-healthiest-foods-red-wine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb71ca1056ba6a07c/69878156f887dc32e4e8a59d/time-50-healthiest-foods-red-wine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, red wine, alcohol","caption":"healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, red wine, alcohol","creditText":"Danny Kim for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/research/","name":"Research"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4144323/alcohol-alzheimers-disease/","name":"Here's More Good Health News For Drinkers"}}]}] ```