Alcohol and Heart Health: Separating Fact from Fiction

5 Risks When Drinking Alcohol In The Summer SunSummer is a wonderful time to go outside and enjoy outdoor activities. However, when these activities include alcohol, it can be a dangerous mix. How COVID-19 Has Impacted Alcohol AbuseAs the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the numbers of alcohol abuse have continued to rise, causing concern across America. Alcohol is a depressant, which means it slows the function of the central nervous system. Alcohol actually blocks some of the messages trying to get to the brain. This alters a person’s perceptions, emotions, movement, vision, and hearing. However, Dr. Hartz also believes that in the future, health practitioners may want to develop more highly personalized guidelines for their patients.

• So if alcohol is a natural product, why do teens need to be concerned about drinking it?
• Exercise can also boost HDL cholesterol levels, and antioxidants can be found in other foods, such as fruits, vegetables and grape juice.
• If you can’t approach your parents, talk to your doctor, school counselor, clergy member, aunt, or uncle.
• They’re also more likely to share smiles and keep everyone involved in the conversation.
• Special emphasis should be placed on educating the public, including pregnant women, about the harmfulness of any amount of alcohol.
• A meta-analysis of 87 studies by Stockwell et al., involving nearly 4 million people, analyzed the impact of their alcohol consumption on the risk of premature death depending on various confounding factors.

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Of those 1.34 billion, nearly 60% were between the ages of 15 and 39, and almost 80% were male. Teens who drink are more likely to be sexually active and to have unsafe, unprotected sex.

In addition, other Harvard researchers found that people with heart disease who consume an average of 14 alcoholic drinks a week appear less likely to die from a heart attack than nondrinkers. True, the data does not confirm a protective effect of light drinking. But the health risks were low, and quite is alcohol good for you similar at levels between zero to one drink per day. That suggests that zero consumption may not necessarily be best, or any better than several drinks per week. In addition, this study is based on a large number of people, which is helpful to detect trends but can overlook important individual factors.

Is drinking alcohol part of a healthy lifestyle?

They did not establish the threshold of when alcohol intake causes harm, or the impact of moderate drinking on brain connectivity. They speculate that drinking patterns, such as binge drinking, may worsen the impact of drinking on the brain but they do not have the data to support it. If you are 40 or older without underlying health conditions, however, the research found that small amounts of alcohol might reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. Countless scientific studies have espoused the idea that a glass of red wine a day can be good for the heart, but a new, sweeping global study published in The Lancet on Friday rejects the notion that any drinking can be healthy. For example, even light drinkers have a tiny, but real, increased risk of some cancers, such as esophageal cancer. Heavy drinking, on the other hand, is linked to a number of poor health outcomes, including heart conditions. Excessive alcohol intake can lead to high blood pressure, heart failure or stroke.

They also called for policies targeting males under age 40, who are most likely to use alcohol harmfully. The idea that a low dose of alcohol was heart healthy likely arose from the fact that people who drink small amounts tend to have other healthy habits, such as exercising, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and not smoking. In observational studies, the heart benefits of those behaviors might have been erroneously attributed to alcohol, Dr. Piano said. The associations of wine-drinking with higher educational attainment and socioeconomic status may explain the perceived health benefits, the authors suggested. Widespread negative associations were also seen between alcohol consumption and integrity of white matter, the brain fibres that scaffold the billions of neurons that make up grey matter.

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As previously noted, data suggests that there are no benefits of drinking alcohol for those under 40. This means that even moderate drinking, which is defined as 2 drinks or less per day for men and 1 for women, can have negative effects on your health.