http://health.usnews.com/top-doctors/directory/best-cardiologists
Reuters reports findings published in the American Journal of Cardiology which found that women who drank higher levels of alcohol in the year leading up to a heart attack ended up living longer than women who never drank.
Research conducted on approximately 1,200 women adds to mounting evidence that alcohol, regardless of the type of drink, can be good for the heart.
Joshua Rosenbloom, a Harvard Medical School student who led the study commented, “One thing that was interesting was that we didn’t see differences among different beverage types.
“The most recent evidence suggests that it’s the alcohol itself that’s beneficial,” he said, adding that whether the women drank beer, wine, or hard liquor, there was a similarly reduced risk of dying within the follow up period.
“One drink a day is a really good target, assuming that a person can be disciplined about that,” said cardiologist James O’Keefe of St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City, Missouri, who was not involved in the study.
Researchers surveying women hospitalized for a heart attack asked questions about how many alcoholic drinks the women usually consumed, along with other health and lifestyle questions.
Ten years or more after their heart attacks, the team found that 44% of women who had abstained from alcohol had died, while 25% of “light drinkers” and 18% of “heavy drinkers” had died. Net-net, women who drank had roughly a 35% lower chance of dying during the follow up period than those who didn’t.
In a prior study which included both men and women, Dr. O’Keefe also found people who continued to drink moderately after having a heart attack had better health than those who abstained.
“You don’t need to assume that people need to stop drinking once they develop heart disease,” he said. “The problem is that alcohol is a slippery slope, and while we know that a little bit is good for us, a lot of it is really bad.”
