Beverages

One study looking at the 1018 randomly selected people in Finland found that moderate alcohol consumption had positive effects on mild cognitive impairment for all Apoe genotypes except for Apoe4 carriers.  In the study they broke up alcohol consumption into three groups: never drinkers, people who drank infrequently which they defined as less than once per month and people that drank frequently which was defined as more than once per month.  What they found was very interesting.  For Apoe4 carriers that never drink, the risk of dementia was the second lowest of all the groups.  The only group that had a lower risk for dementia was non-Apoe4 carriers who drank infrequently.  In fact, Apoe4 carriers who never drink had a lower risk of dementia than Apoe4 non-carriers who never drink.  Although only an observational study, the implications of those results are huge!  If true, it means that the increased risk of Apoe4 can be completely eliminated by never consuming alcohol.1   

Unfortunately for Apoe4 carriers that love to drink, the study found that the risk of dementia increases dramatically with increasing alcohol consumption.  The researchers found that if Apoe4 carriers drink infrequently they are 4 times more likely to have dementia than Apoe4 carriers than never drink.  If Apoe4 carriers drink frequently they are 7.42 times more likely to have dementia than Apoe4 carriers than never drink.  I repeat this again because the results are so shocking to me that I think I must repeat it. If the data is correct, an Apoe4 carrier, like me, can simply stop drinking alcohol in order to decrease their risk of Alzheimer’s to nearly the same levels as Apoe4 non-carriers.  If this study is to be believed, one can mitigate nearly all of the negative effects of Apoe4 simply by abstaining from alcohol.1        

But are the results to be believed?  I’m not going to risk my life on one Finnish study and neither should you.  However, every study that I’ve seen that investigates alcohol consumption, cognition and APOE4 status found similar results.  A study by Downer et al. used the Framingham data to examine the effects of mid and late life alcohol consumption on Apoe4 carriers and found that late life alcohol consumption was associated with a greater decline in learning and memory.  The decline in memory and learning was specific to Apoe4 carriers and was not the case with Apoe4 non-carriers which had improved cognition with moderate alcohol consumption.  The two studies differed in that the Framingham study found that midlife alcohol consumption does not negatively affect late-life learning in memory in Apoe4 carriers.2 

A study conducted in France looked at 1,379 French subjects and also found that increased alcohol consumption was correlated with a decrease in cognition for Apoe4 carriers but not non-carriers.  Finally, another study looked on the effect of Alzheimer’s onset age in relation to Apoe4 status and heavy drinking.  Heavy drinking was defined as more than two drinks per day.  According to the study, heavy drinking combined with Apoe4 decreased Alzheimer’s age onset by 2-3 years.  Heavy drinking, Apoe4 and smoking decreased Alzheimer’s onset age by 10 years.3,4   

Even though alcohol in general appears to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s for Apoe4 carriers, there may be one type of alcohol that is beneficial.  Red wine.  A study conducted in 2018 differentiated between red wine and white wine.  They found that higher white wine consumption increased Alzheimer’s risk for Apoe4 carriers by 21%.  For Apoe4 noncarriers, the opposite occurred, risk for Alzheimer’s was decreased by seven percent.  For red wine, there was no difference between Apoe4 carriers and non-carriers, but there was a difference between men and women.  Higher red wine consumption decreased the Alzheimer’s risk for men by 18% but increased the risk for women by 15%.5    

I know what you are thinking.  What about resveratrol?  Yes resveratrol is a type of polyphenol and as we know polyphenols are supposed to help fight against Alzheimer’s.  However, resveratrol is a bit special and I will discuss resveratrol in detail in the section covering supplements, so keep reading because it may be possible to obtain the benefits of red wine without the added sugar and alcohol which has been shown to have negative effects for Apoe4 carriers.