Alcoholic Beverages Decrease the Death Rate from Heart Disease

Medical Alert News

In this holiday season maybe we can have some vices and still stay healthy. Now mind you this goes against my better judgment, but I am going to share two research articles from the medical literature. The one this week indicates that light to moderate alcohol intake decreases the death rate due to heart and blood vessel disease. The second article Indicates chocolate lowers blood pressure and heart and blood vessel disease (cardiovascular disease).  We’ll debate that next week.

Before you start saying whoopee, let’s take a careful look at these articles.

Moderate drinking of alcoholic beverages decreases the death rate from heart disease.

In the March 30, 2010 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology Dr Kenneth Mukamal (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA), published his findings in regard to light and moderate alcohol consumption. His team studied 245 000 US adults who participated in the US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), an annual survey of a nationally representative sample of US adults, between 1987 and 2000. The survey includes detailed questions on alcohol consumption.

Based upon the results of the questionnaire they separated the participants drinking history into four groups:

1. Abstainers (further classified as never drinkers, lifetime infrequent drinkers, or former drinkers)

2. Light drinkers (three drinks or less per week)

3. Moderate drinkers (four to seven drinks per week for women and four to 14 drinks per week for men)

4. Heavy drinkers (more than seven/14 drinks per week)

As they followed these folks over the next few years they calculated the mortality rate from cardiovascular disease in each group.

Now here comes the good news for those who enjoy your alcoholic beverages.

Moderate drinkers had the lowest mortality from cardiovascular disease. Light drinkers also had a measure of protection but it was not quite as good as those who drank moderately.

The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was actually higher in those who abstained from alcohol and two and those who were heavy drinkers.

Well that’s good news if you like to drink in regard to heart and blood vessel disease.

However alcohol always upsets body chemistry and in the long run that might contribute to other disease processes. So health measures other than drinking alcohol may give you much better overall health benefits.

Bottom line, I don’t recommend drinking alcohol daily.