Protecting Heart Health Means Looking Beyond Food
A heart-healthy lifestyle involves more than choosing nutritious foods and staying physically active. What people consume as alcohol also matters. Cardiologists now point to alcohol use as an important and preventable contributor to high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms and other cardiovascular problems.
Cardiologists Amin Yehya, M.D. and Srihari Naidu, M.D., warn that alcohol can raise blood pressure, increase the risk of atrial fibrillation (AFib) and damage the heart muscle. Their concerns align with growing evidence that already low-level alcohol use causes risks and potential damage for the heart and cardiovascular system.
Already in 2023, Movendi International released an Alcohol Issues Special Feature on Alcohol and Heart Disease that provided a state of the art overview of what science knows about alcohol’s role in multiple heart conditions and alcohol as contributing cause to heart disease risk factors.
Since then, the European Heart Network (EHN) issued a new position paper formally recognising alcohol as an avoidable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. EHN rejects any claim that alcohol consumption, at any level, offers cardiovascular benefits. With around 50,000 alcohol-related cardiovascular deaths occurring in Europe each year, EHN stresses the urgent need for policymakers to take decisive and ambitious alcohol policy action to prevent further loss of life.
Alcohol Use Can Raise Blood Pressure
One of the clearest cardiovascular concerns involves blood pressure. In fact, blood pressure can rise almost immediately after moderate to large amounts of alcohol use and can remain elevated for several hours.
Regular alcohol use above three alcoholic drinks per day can also raise blood pressure and make blood-pressure medication less effective. However, reducing alcohol use can improve blood pressure. Among heavy alcohol users who reduced their intake to moderate levels, systolic blood pressure fell by about 5.5 mm Hg, while diastolic pressure fell by about 4 mm Hg.
A 2023 report provides further context. It concludes that alcohol contributes significantly to hypertension and that high-quality clinical and experimental studies show alcohol use increases blood pressure. For example, the report notes that evidence does not show any level of alcohol use lowering blood pressure or protecting against hypertension in randomized or crossover studies.
This compelling review of the evidence shows hypertension risk can increase already at very low levels of alcohol use. The evidence also shows that cardiovascular risk rises with increasing alcohol use.
The report also highlights the broader consequences of hypertension. High blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure and kidney failure. In fact, hypertension accounted for 10.8 million deaths, or 19.2% of deaths worldwide, in 2019.
Already Low-Level Alcohol Use Can Affect the Heart
Already mall amounts of alcohol risk damaging cardiovascular health.
An international study involving more than 19,500 people across seven studies in the United States, South Korea and Japan followed participants for at least five years.
The researchers found a link between daily alcohol use and higher systolic blood pressure, including among people using alcohol at the level of one alcoholic drink per day. They also found higher diastolic blood pressure among men, although not women.
The study reported an average systolic blood-pressure increase of 1.25 mm Hg among people consuming an average of 12 grams of alcohol per day. At 48 grams per day, the average increase reached 4.9 mm Hg.
Professor Marco Vinceti, the study’s lead author, said researchers found no beneficial effects among adults using small amounts of alcohol compared with people who did not use alcohol.
Alcohol Use Raises the Risk of AFib
Alcohol does also affect the heart’s rhythm. AFib causes an irregular heartbeat and can lead to dizziness, shortness of breath and heart failure. It also significantly increases stroke risk, particularly among older adults and people with other heart conditions.
Cardiologist Srihari Naidu, M.D notes that recent evidence is strengthening concerns about the link between low-dose alcohol use and arrhythmias. Already occasional alcohol use may trigger AFib in older men.
Moreover, a study involving 107,845 people also found a positive link between regular alcohol use and new cases of AFib. The study found that one unit of alcohol, equivalent to 12 grams, per day was linked with a 16% higher risk of AFib over the study period.
Another Movendi International review reports that every additional 10 grams of alcohol per day was associated with an 8% increase in AFib risk.
Alcohol Weakens the Heart Muscle
Long-term, high-level alcohol use causes risk increases for cardiomyopathy, a condition that weakens and enlarges the heart. As the heart becomes less effective at pumping blood, heart failure symptoms can develop.
Dr Naidu warns that alcohol-related cardiomyopathy can remain even after someone stops using alcohol. Treatment may require several medications, defibrillators and, in severe cases, heart transplantation.
Moreover, across data from 103 countries, researchers estimated that alcohol caused about 5.6% of cardiomyopathy deaths.
In countries where heavy alcohol use is highly prevalent, alcohol may contribute to more than 60% of cardiomyopathy deaths.
Evidence Challenges the Idea of “Heart-Healthy” Alcohol Use
Global research also challenges the claim that low-level alcohol use protects against cardiovascular disease. A study of 371,463 people found that genetic evidence supported a link between alcohol use at all levels and increased cardiovascular risk. The researchers identified higher risks of hypertension and coronary artery disease, with risk increasing substantially as alcohol use increased.
Importantly, the study found that apparently lower cardiovascular risk among people with low-level alcohol use could relate to other healthier lifestyle factors rather than alcohol use itself. Once researchers accounted for factors such as physical activity, vegetable intake and smoking, the apparent cardiovascular benefit vanished.
For example, the study found that a genetically predicted one-standard-deviation increase in alcohol use corresponded to a 1.3-fold higher risk of hypertension and a 1.4-fold higher risk of coronary artery disease.
Cardiologist Amin Yehya, M.D. says he increasingly recommends eliminating alcohol use rather than simply limiting it, particularly for people with heart disease or cardiovascular risk factors. The American Heart Association also does not recommend alcohol as part of a heart-healthy lifestyle and states that alcohol use carries potential health risks at any level.
Sources
AOL / Men’s Journal: “Cardiologists Warn Against Alcohol for Better Heart Health”
BGNES (via The Mirror): “Study: Even One Drink a Day Can Raise Blood Pressure”