Heavy Drinking Destroys the Heart

A new research presented at a meeting of the American Society of Hypertension in New Orleans on Wednesday last week shows that heavy drinking can boost the risk of heart attacks and strokes by causing high blood pressure, stiff arteries and rigid heart muscles in men and enlarged hearts in women.

Conducted by researchers at St. James Hospital in Dublin, the study looked at 200 men and women with an average age of 46. All the patients had been referred to the clinic of study leader Dr. Azra Mahmud for hypertension treatment, but were not currently being treated for high blood pressure.

Dr. Mahmud and colleagues divided the subjects into three categories – non drinkers, moderate drinkers and heavy drinkers. Heavy drinking was defined as more than 21 drinks a week for men and more than 14 drinks a week for women while moderate drinking was less than 21 drinks a week for men and 14 drinks a week for women respectively. While 20 percent of the women fell under the heavy drinkers’ category, the figure for men was nearly 40 percent.

The researchers measured the heart muscle and stiffness of arteries and blood pressure inside the aorta of all patients to check if high alcohol consumption brought about any structural changes in the heart and arteries of people who are already at risk for high blood pressure. Men with the heaviest drinking habit were found to be most likely to have high blood pressure and stiffening of the arteries and heart muscle; women in the same range on the other hand were most likely to have enlarged hearts.

“We definitely see quite a deleterious effect,” Dr. Mahmud said. “The most worrisome aspect is in women. It has a direct toxic effect. Basically, women are not able to cope with high alcohol consumption. It is going directly to the heart and damaging it.”

Referring to earlier studies that put people with enlarged hearts at five to six times the risk of having a heart attack, Dr. Mahmud said that once the heart becomes enlarged, indicating that it is over-stressed, it is hard to bring it back to its normal size. While many studies have found that moderate drinking improves heart health, heavy drinking nullifies these effects and causes serious harm.

According to Dr. Mahmud, where heavy drinking accelerates the effects of high blood pressure in men, it exerts a direct toxic effect on the heart tissue in women. In the study subjects, the researchers found these effects to be beyond what would normally be expected for people of the same age with high blood pressure.

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