有人以为，“适量”饮酒不会有损健康，甚至可能有益健康。然而新研究发现，无论你喝的是什么酒，无论你喝多喝少，都会对你的大脑造成危害。

 

There is no such thing as a "safe" level of drinking, with increased consumption of alcohol associated with poorer brain health, according to a new study.

新研究指出，“安全”的饮酒量是不存在的，喝酒喝得越多，对大脑健康的损害就越大。

 

In an observational study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, researchers from the University of Oxford¹ studied the relationship between the self-reported alcohol intake² of some 25,000 people in the UK, and their brain scans.

在一项未经同行评议的观察性研究中，牛津大学的研究人员研究了英国约2.5万人报告的饮酒量和他们的大脑扫描图像之间的关系。

 

The researchers noted³ that drinking had an effect on the brain's gray matter -- regions in the brain that make up "important bits where information is processed," according to lead author Anya Topiwala, a senior clinical researcher at Oxford.

该研究的首席作者、牛津大学高级临床研究员安雅·托皮瓦拉指出，喝酒会影响大脑灰质，这是“信息加工处理的重要区域”。

 

"The more people drank, the less the volume of their gray matter," Topiwala said via email.

托皮瓦拉在电邮中写道：“人们喝的酒越多，大脑灰质就越少。”

 

"Brain volume reduces with age and more severely⁴ with dementia. Smaller brain volume also predicts worse performance on memory testing," she explained.

她解释道：“脑容量会随着年龄增长而下降，痴呆症患者会下降得更厉害。脑容量更小预示着记忆测试的表现会更差。”

 

"Whilst alcohol only made a small contribution to this (0.8%), it was a greater contribution than other 'modifiable' risk factors," she said, explaining that modifiable risk factors are "ones you can do something about, in contrast to aging."

她说：“尽管酒精对脑容量下降的影响很小（只有0.8%），但是比其他可调节的风险因素占比都更大。”她解释说，可调节的风险因素指的是“你可控的因素，相对于不可控的衰老而言”。

 

The team also investigated whether certain drinking patterns, beverage⁵ types and other health conditions made a difference to the impact of alcohol on brain health.

研究团队还调查了特定的饮酒习惯、酒精饮料类型和本人健康状况是否会改变酒精对大脑健康的影响程度。

 

They found that there was no "safe" level of drinking -- meaning that consuming any amount of alcohol was worse than not drinking it. They also found no evidence that the type of drink -- such as wine, spirits or beer -- affected⁶ the harm done to the brain.

他们发现，“安全的”饮酒量是不存在的，这意味着，喝多喝少都有害，不喝才是安全的。他们还发现，没有证据证明酒的类型（比如葡萄酒、白酒或啤酒）对大脑受损程度有不同的影响。

 

However, certain characteristics, such as high blood pressure, obesity⁷ or binge-drinking, could put people at higher risk, researchers added.

不过，研究人员补充道，高血压、肥胖等身体特征和酗酒行为会提升大脑受损风险。

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