Wine may be good for the heart, new study says, but experts arent convinced

For example, some people who are on cholesterol-lowering medicines may experience muscle aches when they drink alcohol. Because alcohol and cholesterol medicine both are processed through your liver, they are, in a sense, competing for clearance. So, it’s important to think about your overall health and talk to a healthcare provider about your personal risk factors. Abnormal heart sounds, murmurs, ECG abnormalities, and enlarged heart on chest x-ray may lead to the diagnosis. If you’re concerned about alcohol’s impact on your health, talk with your healthcare provider. Medications, therapy, and group support can help you decrease your alcohol consumption.

• However, it has also been noted that excessive drinking can dramatically increase the risk of heart disease, cancer, liver cirrhosis, and other chronic health conditions.
• The outlook for people with alcoholic cardiomyopathy varies depending on how long alcohol was abused and how much alcohol was consumed during that time.
• Myocardial depression secondary to alcohol is initially reversible however prolonged sustained alcohol use leads to irreversible dysfunction.
• Alcohol may affect various mechanisms implicated in ischemic preconditioning.
• That means, if you’re living with other medical conditions and/or taking certain medications, this will all have an impact on how alcohol affects you.
• The 1,232 participants in the current study had type 2 diabetes or risk factors such as smoking tobacco, high cholesterol and blood pressure, were overweight or obese and/or had a family history of heart disease.

Is Alcohol Ever Beneficial to Your Health?

Then what is alcoholism do your best to reduce stress, keep up with exercise and eat a diet that’s good for your heart – all general advice for looking after your heart, whether or not you’re drinking alcohol. Thiamine (200 mg once daily), multivitamins, vitamin B-12, folate, and mineral supplementation are beneficial for patients with AC because of the significant prevalence of concomitant nutritional or electrolyte deficiencies in these patients. Animal studies have suggested a benefit from vitamins B-1 and B-12, speculated to be due to protective effects against apoptosis and protein damage. Although anticoagulation may be of benefit to patients with profound LV dysfunction and atrial fibrillation, the risks must be weighed heavily in this patient population. In addition, alcohol has been shown to have a negative effect on net protein synthesis.

Impact of Drinking Patterns and Types of Alcoholic Beverages on Risk

But there are ways that alcohol affects your body over time that are important to understand. One of the long-term effects of alcohol on your heart is alcoholic cardiomyopathy. This is when your heart-pumping function gets weaker and your heart gets larger due to changes from heavy alcohol use over a long period of time. They found an increased risk for atrial fibrillation in people who drank one to three glasses of wine and liquor per day. A 2023 study stated that even one drink per day can increase a person’s blood pressure. A 2024 study reported that even moderate drinking can raise a person’s risk of cancer.

• In many ways, your medical history (and present) can tell you a lot about your future with alcohol.
• In plain English, that’s an irregular heartbeat brought on by excessive, or binge drinking.
• If so, this may require medicines to restore a regular heartbeat (known as cardioversion), electrical cardioversion (using a defibrillator to apply an electric shock to the heart) or a procedure called cardiac ablation.
• Regular or high alcohol use can hurt your heart and lead to diseases of the heart muscle, called cardiomyopathy.

Health Conditions

Some studies have suggested that even moderation of alcohol consumption similar outcomes as compared to abstinence. Certain microscopic features may suggest damage secondary to alcohol causing cardiomyopathy. Commonly https://ecosoberhouse.com/ seen cellular structural alterations include changes in the mitochondrial reticulum, cluster formation of mitochondria and disappearance of inter-mitochondrial junctions. Dr. Cho also warns that if you have liver dysfunction or take other medicines that are processed through the liver, your risks might be different. Talk to your healthcare provider about how alcohol might interact with your prescription medicines. And sure, we’ve all had a night here or there where we’ve had one too many and we know it.

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Finally, in studies of people from certain Eastern European countries, investigators have failed to find a cardioprotective effect with any level of ethanol consumption (Britton and McKee 2000). This suggests that alcoholic beverage type may be an important mediator, because in countries such as Russia, spirits are the alcoholic beverage of choice. However, the negative associations between alcohol consumption and CV outcomes in these countries also may relate to pervasive patterns of binge drinking (Leon et al. 2009).

What’s the Link Between Alcohol and Heart Disease?

The risk is highest for those who drink heavily (defined as more than one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men) and those who binge drink. Even healthy people will experience an increase in blood pressure after having a drink. Over time, regular heavy drinking can contribute to hypertension, which increases your risk for heart attack and stroke. In a group of people over 60 at risk for heart disease, drinking one-half to one glass of wine a day reduced the risk of having a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke by 50% when compared to people who drank no wine.

Alcohol’s Effects on Blood Pressure and Incident Hypertension

Prior studies rely on people reporting how much wine they drink, Estruch said. Such memories might be mistaken, or people might fib because they’re embarrassed about their wine drinking. However, these benefits evaporated in people who had more than one glass of wine a day. “By measuring tartaric acid in alcoholic heart the urine, alongside food and drink questionnaires, we have been able to make a more accurate measurement of wine consumption,” Estruch said. However, critics say the study doesn’t consider the well-known health harms of alcohol, including wine. But for those who enjoy drinking a glass of red wine at dinner, London had this parting advice.

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If you drink alcohol, enjoy it with a meal, which will slow down the absorption of alcohol into your bloodstream. Because alcohol is high in calories, drinking excessive amounts can lead to weight gain, which raises the risk of diabetes. Researchers have found evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction or impaired bioenergetics related to alcohol consumption. This is not surprising, because mitochondria are a major target for free-radical injury. Dysfunctional mitochondria are less efficient, can become a source of ROS, and are more likely to initiate apoptosis (Marzetti et al. 2013). Figure 3 summarizes the potential mechanisms underlying the cardioprotective and adverse effects of alcohol consumption.