Complain about a product or service

Moderate Drinking May Be Beneficial in Healthy Men

October 24, 2006

• Binge Drinking Tied to Conditions in the College Environment • Study: Parents Often Source of Liquor for Underage Drinkers • Anheuser-Busch Ends Alcoholic Energy Drink Sales • Anheuser-Busch, Miller Face 'Alcospeed' Suit • More Alcoholism in Retirement Communities? • Alcohol Dependency Widespread, Study Finds • College May Be Bad Influence On Budding Alcoholics • Drinking Heavily in College May Lead to Heart Disease Later in Life • Anheuser-Busch Condemned for Pushing Alcohol-Heavy Spykes "Liquid Lunchables" • Binge Drinking Widespread Among College Students • Experts Offer Tips on Teenage Binge Drinking • Moderate Drinking May Be OK for Men with High Blood Pressure • Australian Researchers Report New Alcoholism Treatment • Moderate Drinking May Be Beneficial in Healthy Men • Stars Urged to Rethink "Bud.TV" • Light to Moderate Drinking Reduces Risk of Cardiac Events, Death • Early Drinking Linked to Risk for Alcohol Dependence • Study Shows 15 Percent Work Under Influence of Alcohol • Alcoholism May Be Linked to Taste Buds • Higher Alcohol Prices Don't Always Cut Drinking • Alcohol Ads Linked to Teen Drinking • Tobacco Promotion Encourages Binge Drinking • More about Alcohol ...

For men with healthy lifestyle habits, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may be associated with a lower risk of heart attack than drinking heavily or not drinking at all, according to a report in the current issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Previous studies have found that adults who drink moderate amounts of alcohol have a lower risk of heart attack than those who do not drink at all, according to background information in the article. Researchers suspect this is due to increased levels of HDL or "good" cholesterol in the blood.

Because there are many risks associated with heavy drinking, physicians do not typically recommend that patients begin drinking alcohol to reduce their heart disease risk -- instead, they focus on other proven lifestyle interventions, including diet and exercise. However, these habits are not mutually exclusive, the authors write.

"For individuals who exercise, abstain from smoking, maintain optimal weight and adhere to an appropriate diet, there may be few other standard lifestyle interventions to lower risk," the authors write. "Whether alcohol intake is related to a lower risk for myocardial infarction in such individuals is unknown."

Kenneth J. Mukamal, M.D., M.P.H., M.A., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and colleagues assessed the connection between drinking alcohol and heart attack in 8,867 healthy men who were part of the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which began in 1986 and included 51,529 dentists, pharmacists, veterinarians and other health care professionals age 40 to 75.

At the beginning of the study and at regular intervals afterward, the participants filled out questionnaires about their diets and medical conditions, reported the frequency with which they consumed particular substances and specified the types of alcohol they drank.

All of the men in the current study had healthy lifestyles, defined as not smoking, having a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25, getting at least 30 minutes of exercise per day and eating a healthy diet, including large amounts of fruits, vegetables, fish and polyunsaturated fats and low amounts of trans-fats and red meat.

Between 1986 and 2002, 106 men had heart attacks. This included eight of the 1,282 who had about two drinks per day, nine of the 714 who drank three or more drinks per day, 34 of the 2,252 who drank .1 to 4.9 drinks per day and 28 of the 1,889 who did not drink at all.

Those who had two drinks per day had the lowest risk for heart attack and those who did not drink at all had the highest.

The researchers also performed an analysis comparing those who had three drinks per day or more and those who drank less than that.

For the latter, the authors estimate that 25 percent of the incidence cases of heart attack were attributable to consuming less than three dinks per day.

"There is a complicated mix of risks and benefits attributed to moderate drinking in observational studies, and the individual and societal complications of heavy drinking are well known," the authors conclude.

"It is easy to understand why clinical guidelines encourage physicians and patients to concentrate on seemingly more innocuous interventions, despite the relative paucity of effective, straightforward and generalizable methods for encouraging regular physical activity, weight reduction and abstinence from smoking in clinical practice. Our results suggest that moderate drinking could be viewed as a complement, rather than an alternative, to these other lifestyle interventions, a viewpoint espoused by some authors."

Report Your Experience
If you've had a bad experience -- or a good one -- with a consumer product or service, we'd like to hear about it. All complaints are reviewed by class action attorneys and are considered for publication on our site. Knowledge is power! Help spread the word. File your consumer report now.