Battling Heart and Stroke

The adverse effects of heavy drinking: too much of a good thing can be bad

As promised, I present here the second part of the series of resource posts on alcohol consumption and its effect on cardiovascular health. In the first part, I’ve tackled the health benefits associated with light to moderate alcohol drinking. In this post, I present a review of the adverse effects of alcohol drinking.

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Part I: The Health Benefits of Alcohol - “Eat, drink and be healthy”

Drinking alcohol has been linked to a wide range of health effects, ranging from the very good to the very bad. A post in June reported on the adverse effects of heavy drinking on cardiovascular health. On the other hand, light to moderate drinking has been shown to have long lasting beneficial effects. The only problem is how to determine the boundary between healthy and unhealthy alcohol consumption. Some researchers are concerned that recent reports about the health benefits of alcohol may mislead people to drink more than they should, thereby doing more harm than good to their health.

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Heavy drinking is bad for the heart and for the arteries. Furthermore, heavy alcohol consumption affects men and women differently - although in the long run, the effects are never beneficial. This is according to a report presented at American Society of Hypertension 2008 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA in May.

Men: Heavy drinking among men leads to elevated blood pressure. Chronic high blood pressure then leads to stiffening of the arteries.

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