<body><div> A person's IQ in high school has been linked to the amount of <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/alcohol/index.html" rel="nofollow"> alcohol </a> they consume later in life, a new study has found. Researchers looked at the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13864107/Are-drinking-alcohol-Use-eye-opening-calculator-out.html" rel="nofollow"> drinking habits </a> from a randomized sample of 8,254 participants between 53 and 65 years old and compared it to their IQs collected during their senior year of high school. They found that for every one-point IQ increase, the person was 1.6 percent more likely to indulge in moderate to heavy alcohol use. <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13672825/Research-reveals-REALLY-happens-body-glass-wine-beer-day.html" rel="nofollow"> Moderate drinking </a> was categorized as consuming one to 29 drinks per month for women and one to 59 for men, and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9512393/Doctors-reveal-physical-signs-youre-drinking-much.html" rel="nofollow"> heavy drinking </a> was classified as women having 30 alcoholic beverages or more per month and 60 drinks or more for men. Dr E. Sherwood Brown, the study's lead author and psychiatry professor at UT Southwestern said: 'We're not saying that your IQ in high school controls your destiny. 'But IQ levels could lead to intervening social factors that influence drinking, and it's an important mechanism to explore. 'Higher IQ seemed to predict a greater likelihood of being a moderate or heavy drinker but not a binge drinker.' <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13335701/Alcohol-related-deaths-soar-time-high-wake-Covid-fuelled-concerning-uptick-middle-aged-women.html" rel="nofollow"> Alcohol consumption is on the rise </a> for those 50 years and older in the US, with studies showing an increase in both overall drinking and binge drinking. According to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/648413/alcohol-consumption-increasingly-viewed-unhealthy.aspx?utm_source=alert&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=morelink&amp;utm_campaign=syndication" rel="nofollow"> Gallup poll </a> published in August, roughly 55 percent of adults aged 55 and older consume moderate to heavy amounts of alcohol. This statistic caused Dr Brown to question whether there was a link between people's IQ levels and their drinking habits due to past research connecting cognitive ability to future alcohol use. 'That led me to wonder, if alcohol influences cognition, could cognition affect alcohol consumption?' he said. To answer this question, researchers looked at data from a Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that compiled the IQs and the lifestyle information of more than 10,000 local high school seniors in 1957. 'The aim ... was to assess the relationship between adolescent IQ and midlife alcohol use and to explore possible mediators of this relationship,' the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article-abstract/59/4/agae035/7683100?redirectedFrom=fulltext&amp;login=true#459759396" rel="nofollow"> study </a> said. The researchers compared this information to the survey surrounding those students' drinking habits later in life and found that those who had a higher IQ were likely to consume more alcohol. <figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0kmRUj_0wCa4nMp00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0kmRUj_0wCa4nMp00" width="634" height="423" ><figcaption>People with high IQs could be heavier drinkers because they go on to have a career that requires more social drinking </figcaption></figure><nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate> While IQ was linked to heavy drinking, the study found that participants who had higher intelligence levels had 'significantly fewer binge-drinking episodes.' The main difference between binge drinking and heavy drinking is the frequency at which the alcohol is consumed. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines heavy drinking as men consuming five or more drinks in a day or 15-plus in a week and four or more per day for women and at least eight per week. Those who are binge drinkers consume five or more drinks within two hours for men and four or more within that same timeframe for women. The researchers reported that their findings could be partially influenced by the person's income level because those with a higher IQ are more likely to pursue a stressful or high-earning job where social drinking is more common. <nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate> Dr Jayme Palka, the study's co-author and assistant psychiatry professor at UT Southwestern said: 'While it's not possible to capture all the underlying mechanisms that mediate the relationship between drinking and IQ, we know that income partially explains the pathway between the two.' Statista reported that roughly 54 percent of adults 50 to 59 years old have moderate drinking levels while between 6.4 percent and 7.8 percent reported heavy alcohol use. Dr Brown said he was inspired to conduct the study because of the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13881771/experts-warn-alcoholic-drinks-week-risk-cancer.html" rel="nofollow"> link between excessive drinking and major health issues </a> like high blood pressure, cancer and stroke. An estimated 474,000 global cardiovascular deaths in 2019 were attributed to alcohol consumption, according to the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol#:~:text=Health%20risks%20of%20alcohol%20use&amp;text=Drinking%20alcohol%20is%20associated%20with,anxiety%20and%20alcohol%20use%20disorders." rel="nofollow"> World Health Organization </a> (WHO). <nbtemplate data-id="AdPlaceholder" data-content="JTdCJTdE"></nbtemplate> It has also been linked to worsening mental health conditions including depression and anxiety. 'Alcohol is a carcinogen and contributes to about 50 different types of death,' Dr Timothy Naimi, who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/14/health/alcohol-drinking-health-wellness/index.html" rel="nofollow"> CNN </a> . Naimi, who was not involved in the study, continued: 'Overall, alcohol is a health hazard. 'The most consistent finding across all the science is that, generally speaking, the less you drink, the better you are off health-wise.' </div></body>

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A new study has found a link between a person's IQ level and their alcohol consumption. The study looked at 8,000 people to determine if they were moderate to heavy drinkers.