A glass of wine or Japanese sake rice wine may help brain function for the over 40's, a new study carried out in Japan suggests. In a four-year study conducted on about 2,000 people by Japan's national ageing research centre, people who typically drank about one to three glasses of wine, or similar amounts of sake, a day had average IQ scores of 108.0 for men and 106.2 for women. Non-drinkers were at 104.7 for men and 103.7 for women, while heavy drinkers had the lowest IQ scores, the study said. The researchers intend to extend their study to discover if moderate drinkers of other types of alcohol, such as gin or beer, will score better than non-drinkers.
