Just one pint of beer or average glass of wine a day may begin to shrink the overall volume of the brain, a new study has found, and the damage worsens as the number of daily drinks rises.

一项新的研究发现，每天只喝一品脱啤酒或一杯葡萄酒就可能会开始缩小大脑的总体积，而且随着每日饮酒量的增加，损害会加剧。
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On average, people at age 50 who drank a pint of beer or 6-ounce glass of wine (two alcohol units) a day in the last month had brains that appeared two years older than those who only drank a half of a beer (one unit), according to the study, which published Friday in the journal Nature.

根据上周五发表在《自然》杂志上的研究，平均而言，50岁的人在上个月每天喝一品脱啤酒或6盎司葡萄酒（两个酒精单位）的人，他们大脑似乎比那些只喝半杯啤酒（一个酒精单位）的人老了两岁。
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The brains of people that age who said they drank three alcohol units a day had reductions in both white and gray matter that looked as if they had added 3.5 years to the ages of their brains.

这个年龄段的人说他们每天喝三个单位的酒，他们的大脑白质和灰质都减少了，看起来他们的大脑年龄增加了3.5岁。

One alcohol unit is 10 milligrams or 8 grams of pure alcohol. That means 25 milligrams or a single shot of liquor is one unit; a 16-ounce can of beer or cider is two units; and a standard 6-ounce glass of wine (175 milligrams) is two units.

一个酒精单位是10毫克或8克纯酒精。这意味着25毫克或一小杯白酒是一个单位；一罐16盎司的啤酒或苹果酒是两个单位；一杯标准的6盎司葡萄酒（175毫克）是两个单位。

The brains of nondrinkers who began consuming an average of one alcohol unit a day showed the equivalent of a half a year of aging, according to the study.

根据该研究，不喝酒的人平均每天喝一个单位的酒精，他们的大脑显示出相当于半年的衰老。

In comparison, drinking four alcohol units a day aged a person's brain by more than 10 years.

相比之下，每天饮用四个单位的酒精会使人的大脑衰老10年以上。

"It's not linear. It gets worse the more you drink," first author Remi Daviet, an assistant professor of marketing in the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement.

威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校商学院市场营销学助理教授Remi Daviet在一份声明中说：“这不是线性的。它越喝越糟。”

"A problem in this study is that they only have information on people's drinking habits for the one year prior to the (brain) imaging," said alcohol researcher Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington.

华盛顿大学健康指标科学教授、酒精研究员 Emmanuela Gakidou 说: “这项研究的一个问题是，他们只掌握了人们在(大脑)成像之前一年的饮酒习惯信息。”

"I think this is a major limitation of the study as it's likely that the cumulative consumption of alcohol throughout one's lifetime is associated with the brain, not just the level of consumption right before the images were taken," she added.

她补充说：“因为一个人一生中累积的饮酒量很可能与大脑有关，而不仅仅是在拍摄图像之前的饮酒量。我认为这是这项研究的一个主要局限性。”
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"The relationship between alcohol and health is complex, and our understanding of that relationship is evolving over time. Based on this study, I would not really draw any definitive conclusions, but I would say that the authors have identified areas for further research."

“酒精和健康之间的关系是复杂的，我们对这种关系的理解是随着时间的推移而不断发展的。基于这项研究，我不会得出任何明确的结论，但我会说，我们已经确定了需要进一步研究的领域。”
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Benefits of alcohol?
Doctors used to believe that moderate amounts of alcohol could provide a health benefit, especially to the heart and the brain, but recent research has called that assumption into question. A number of studies have found no amount of drinking to be healthy, and the World Heart Federation recently published a policy brief saying there is "no level of alcohol consumption that is safe for health."​

酒精的好处？
医生们过去认为适量的酒精对健康有益，特别是对心脏和大脑有益，但最近的研究对这一假设提出了质疑。许多研究发现，饮酒不一定有益于健康，世界心脏联合会最近发布了一份政策简报，称“无论喝多少酒水都是不安全的。”

"Small amounts of alcohol are associated with health benefits for some conditions, such as ischemic heart disease and diabetes, but harmful for others, such as road traffic accidents and breast cancer," Gakidou said, adding there are others, such as a stroke, where the outcome isn't clear.

Gakidou说：“少量酒精对于某些疾病，如缺血性心脏病和糖尿病，有益健康。但对其他事情，如道路交通事故和乳腺癌，有害。”他补充说，还有一些疾病，如中风，其中诱因尚不清楚。

"There isn't really a simple answer for a given individual," she said. "Based on what we do know at this time, whether small amounts of alcohol are beneficial or harmful for an individual depends on that person's health status and their risk profile. ... Are they more prone to heart disease or cancer?"

她说: “对于一个特定的人来说，真的没有一个简单的答案。根据我们目前所知，少量饮酒对个人是有益还是有害，取决于个人的健康状况和风险状况……他们更容易患心脏病或癌症吗？”

Brain scans and large study size
The report analyzed data from more than 36,000 people who took part in the UK Biobank study, which houses in-depth genetic and health information on more than 500,000 middle-aged adults living in the United Kingdom.
People in the study had provided information on the number of drinks they had each week in the previous year and had undergone an MRI brain scan. Researchers compared their scans with images of typical aging brains and then controlled for such variables as age, sex, smoking status, socioeconomic status, genetic ancestry and overall head size.

脑部扫描和大规模研究
这份报告分析了超过36000名参与英国生物库研究的人的数据，该研究收集了超过50万生活在英国的中年人的深度遗传和健康信息。
参与这项研究的人们提供了他们前一年每周饮酒量的信息，并进行了核磁共振脑部扫描。研究人员将扫描结果与典型的衰老大脑图像进行了比较，然后对年龄、性别、吸烟状况、社会经济状况、遗传血统和整体头部大小等变量进行了控制。

"The fact that we have such a large sample size allows us to find subtle patterns, even between drinking the equivalent of half a beer and one beer a day," coauthor Gideon Nave, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
"Having this dataset is like having a microscope or a telescope with a more powerful lens," Nave said. "You get a better resolution and start seeing patterns and associations you couldn't before."

宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的市场营销助理教授coauthor Gideon Nave在一份声明中说：“事实上，我们拥有如此大的样本量，即使在每天喝半杯啤酒和一杯啤酒的情况下，我们也能找到其中的微小差别。”
“拥有这样的数据库就像拥有一个显微镜或者一个具有更大镜头的望远镜,”Nave说。“你得到了一个更好的解决方案，开始看到以前看不到的范例与联系。”

He told CNN that is why this study was able to find a more distinct pattern of association between drinking and brain volume than past studies. However, he added, the results are just that -- an association -- as the study could not prove cause and effect.
"Our study is by far the largest investigation of the topic," Nave said. "It uses a general population sample, and it controls for more confounds than before. As such, it provides overwhelmingly more evidence than any previous investigations and gets us closer to settling the debate."

他告诉CNN，这就是为什么这项研究能够找到比以往研究更明显的饮酒与脑容量之间的关系模式。他补充说，研究结果只是一种联系，因为这项研究不能证明因果关系。
“我们的研究是迄今为止对这个话题的最大规模的调查,”Nave说。“它使用了普通人群样本，控制了比以往更多的混淆因素。因此，它提供了比以往任何调查都多得多的证据，使我们更接近于解决这场争论。”

However, the study left a number of questions unanswered, such as a person's cognitive engagement, Gakidou said.
"I believe that there is sufficient evidence that suggests that brain function decays faster among those that are not engaged in intellectually stimulating activities, either through work or hobbies," she said.
"My main criticism is that the authors are overinterpreting the findings of their study and drawing conclusions that are not necessarily supported by what is presented in the paper. I do not see a significant trend in their graphs, and so I'm not convinced by the conclusions."

然而，Gakidou 说，这项研究还有一些问题没有得到解答，比如一个人的认知参与度。
她说：“我相信有足够的证据表明，那些不从事激发智力活动的人，无论是通过工作还是业余爱好，大脑功能衰退得更快。”
“我的主要批评是，作者们过度解读了他们的研究结果，得出的结论不一定得到论文所述内容的支持。我在他们的图表中没有看到明显的趋势，因此我不相信这些结论。”