A study has shown that drinking two pints per day can reduce dementia risk by more then a third.
After analysing nearly 25,000 boozing patterns over 60s, experts found that teetotallers were at highest risk for brain-wasting diseases.
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The risk for people who consume between one to two drinks per day fell by 38 percent.
Scientists believe that alcohol may help protect the heart. This in turn reduces the risk of developing dementia.
Another theory is it reduces the build-up of toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s.
Louise Mewton, a researcher at the University of New South Wales, Australia, stated in an article published in Addiction: “Drinking up to 40g a day [five units] was associated with a lower risk of dementia when compared with lifetime abstaining.”
A million people in Britain will be living with dementia in just three years’ time.
Despite it being the UK’s biggest single killer, there is still currently no effective treatment to tackle the disease.
Dr Sara Imarisio, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “The results showed that people who never drank alcohol had a higher chance of developing dementia than those who did.
“These results are consistent with previous research on this topic, which also show that heavy consumption of alcohol, as well as not drinking, seems linked to a higher risk of dementia.”