New Study Claims That Drinking Beer Might Make You Smarter Maybe

This might come as a bit of a surprise, but there's a new study that claims drinking beer might make you smarter. Maybe.

Before I dig in to try and figure out this logic, I have to confess that this study makes very little sense to me. Drinking beer makes you smarter? Oh, the stories I could tell. I saw this claim on Study Finds. It's based on a study by the JAMA Network stating that low to moderate drinking can lead to better cognitive function later in adulthood.

Here's the simple version of what this study was trying to figure out. Is there an association between non-heavy drinking and better use of your brain as you get older? Here's their findings in their own words:

In this cohort study of 19 887 participants from the Health and Retirement Study, with a mean follow-up of 9.1 years, when compared with never drinking, low to moderate drinking was associated with significantly better trajectories of higher cognition scores for mental status, word recall, and vocabulary and with lower rates of decline in each of these cognition domains.

Couple of observations. First, that's a lot of participants so I'll credit them with getting a large sample size. Second, I have to believe that the participants were lying and/or messing with the people taking the survey. That's just my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

In defense of the scientific people, it appears that they measured actual brain function and didn't just allow people to answer questions so I believe that they believe what they found. But, common sense in my own mind just doesn't back this up.

Full disclosure: I am not a drinker. Never have been and never will be. But, judging just by my friends who do drink I can't state that any of them got smarter or recalled information better because they threw back some brews.

Read the study for yourself and see what you think. Does beer make your brain work better? If so, this Bud's for you I guess.