Associations of alcohol consumption and dietary behaviors with severe cognitive impairment among Chinese older men and women

ABSTRACT

Background

China is a country with a large alcohol user population, but it also faces other public health challenges like the growth of older adult population and shift in dietary behaviors in the past few decades. We examined the associations of alcohol consumption and dietary behaviors with severe cognitive impairment among Chinese older men and women.

Methods

We used panel data from three waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) to examine this topic of interest. Older adults who answered three survey waves were analyzed (age ≥ 65), with a total of 7,950 observations (n = 7,950).

Results

In the panel logistic regression models, only former alcohol use was positively associated with severe cognitive impairment among older men (p < .05), but not in older women. Neither current light nor heavy alcohol consumption was associated with cognitive impairment. Older men and women who did not consume or rarely consume fruits and vegetables were more likely to develop severe cognitive impairment (all p < .01).

Conclusion

Public health practitioners can use the empirical results from this research to identify what patterns of alcohol use and dietary behaviors can help prevent cognitive impairment among older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol consumption
• dietary behaviors
• older adults
• China
• cognitive impairment

Acknowledgments

Data used for this research were provided by the “Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey” (CLHLS) managed by the Center for Healthy Aging and Development Studies, Peking University. CLHLS is supported by funds from the U.S. National Institutes on Aging (NIA), China Natural Science Foundation, China Social Science Foundation, and United Nations Population Fund. We thank research participants and researchers for their efforts in collecting the CLHLS data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical clearance

The authors used only secondary datasets for this present study and data analyses. Thus, approvals from Institutional Review Board (IRB) were not required.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.