A new study suggests that even light, lifetime alcohol consumption may be linked to poorer hand dexterity and balance as people age. The research, published in Alcohol and Alcoholism, examined whether low-level drinking affects motor coordination and postural stability in healthy adults, and found notable associations when age is considered alongside lifetime alcohol intake.
Manual dexterity refers to the ability to perform coordinated hand and finger movements to grasp and manipulate objects, while static postural stability is the capacity to stand upright without swaying. Both skills are important for independent living as people grow older, from everyday tasks to preventing falls.
Timothy C. Durazzo, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a clinical neuropsychologist at the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center within the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, explained the shifting view on “low-level” drinking. “For decades, ‘low-level’ alcohol consumption at or below current guidelines (≤1 standard drink equivalent/day for females, ≤2 standard drink equivalents/day for males) has been proposed to carry minimal systemic health risks or functional consequences,” he told PsyPost.
Durazzo noted that the consensus is moving. “There is increasing evidence that any level of alcohol consumption is associated with increased risk for at least six different types of cancer,” he said. He added that even low-level drinking at or below previous federal guidelines “is associated with abnormalities in structure, blood flow and metabolite markers of cell integrity across multiple regions of the human brain.”
The researchers set out to explore how low-level drinking relates to physical motor skills. While prior imaging work had suggested subtle brain changes with low-level alcohol use, it was unclear whether these translated into tangible functional differences. Durazzo explained that there were “no published studies on the association of low-level alcohol consumption with concurrent measures of manual dexterity and complex motor coordination, and static postural stability in exclusively healthy, non-smoking adults,” and that these measures matter because functional impairments could affect activities of daily living, especially with ageing.
In total, 83 healthy, non-smoking adults aged 21 to 69 were recruited. Participants were screened to ensure no history of psychiatric, neurological or major medical conditions and to confirm a history of low-level drinking, with limited monthly consumption and no binge drinking in the year prior to the study.
Alcohol consumption was assessed using the Lifetime Drinking History questionnaire, which provided the total number of drinks over the past year, the past three years, and across the participant’s lifetime, along with their lifetime average drinks per month.
To measure physical coordination, participants completed the Lafayette Grooved Pegboard Test, which evaluates manual dexterity, complex motor coordination and motor speed. They performed the task with both their dominant and non-dominant hands.
Static postural stability was assessed with the Sharpened Romberg Test, where participants stood heel-to-toe with arms crossed for 60 seconds. The test was done first with eyes open and then with eyes closed, the latter requiring the brain to rely more on internal sensory and vestibular cues.
Analyses of the pegboard results showed that recent drinking in the prior one to three years did not predict performance. Instead, the study found that the product of age and total lifetime drinks was a reliable predictor of manual dexterity. A higher age-for-lifetime-drinks product correlated with slower completion times for the dominant hand, and also for the combined times of both hands. Durazzo said the associations were of moderate magnitude, with the relationship strongest for the dominant hand.
Results from the balance test followed a different pattern. All participants managed to stand for the full 60 seconds when their eyes were open. In the eyes-closed condition, a higher lifetime average of drinks per month was linked to poorer performance. Specifically, for each standard deviation increase in lifetime average drinks per month, participants had 2.3 times lower odds of perfectly maintaining balance for the full minute.
The findings align with earlier PsyPost reporting on brain-imaging work that linked higher lifetime alcohol consumption in combination with older age to subtle neurological declines in healthy adults, reinforcing the broader concern about “low-risk” drinking over a lifetime.
Durazzo emphasised that the current results, together with existing research on the brain effects of low-level alcohol consumption, suggest that lifetime alcohol consumption deemed “low risk” alongside ageing may have functional and brain biological consequences in healthy adults.
However, the authors cautioned that the study’s modest sample size, particularly among women (22 women versus 61 men), limits the ability to draw conclusions about sex-specific effects. They also noted the observational design cannot establish causation, as unmeasured factors such as diet, exercise or genetics could influence motor performance and balance. Future research might examine broader health markers, including blood chemistry and vitamins, to understand how they interact with lifetime alcohol exposure to affect coordination over time.
Durazzo signalled further work to investigate whether low-level drinking also relates to attention, concentration, learning and memory, and processing speed in a similar cohort of healthy adults with low-level intake.
The study, “In healthy adults with low-level alcohol intake greater age and lifetime alcohol consumption are associated with poorer manual dexterity and higher lifetime consumption is related to worse postural stability,” was authored by Timothy C. Durazzo, Nicole D. Evangelista, M. Windy McNerney, Ansgar J. Furst, Maheen M. Adamson, Keith Humphreys, and Dieter J. Meyerhoff.
