Heart Disease News, Articles & Information

People who consume two alcoholic drinks a day may be as much as 30% less likely to die from heart disease compared to non-drinkers according to a recent Danish study published in the European Heart Journal.

The study included 11,914 men and women from the Copenhagen Heart Study and spanned a period of almost 20 years. Researchers tracked participants leisure time physical activity levels and weekly consumption of alcohol in order to determine the effects of physical activity and exercise on ischemic heart disease.

The researchers found that moderate exercise reduced the likelihood of dying from heart disease but that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol combined with exercise reduced the risk of heart disease more than was possible though exercise alone.

Participants who neither drank nor exercised regularly were around 30% more likely to die from ischemic heart disease as those who either consumed alcohol moderately or exercised regularly. Those who both drank moderately and exercised regularly were around half as likely to die from ischemic heart disease as those who did neither.

The research suggested that alcohol consumption beyond 14 drinks a week has little further benefit on ischemic heart disease risk compared to light to moderate alcohol consumption and in fact increased heart disease risk slightly in physically active people. Likewise moderate to heavy levels of physical activity offered no further benefit over light exercise in reducing ischemic heart disease risk.

The main findings of the study are presented in the graph below.

Moderate alcohol consumption was defined as consuming between 1 and 14 alcoholic drinks a week while physical inactivity was defined as participating in less than 2 hours of light exercise a week.

“Our study shows that being both physically active and drinking a moderate amount of alcohol is important for lowering the risk of both fatal IHD and death from all causes.” said research leader Professor Morton Gronbaek who works at the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen, Denmark.

It is thought that alcohol consumption reduces the risk of heart disease by thinning the blood and boosting levels of the “good” HDL cholesterol without increasing LDL or “bad” cholesterol levels.

The benefits of alcohol are erased however when it is consumed at higher levels when the negative effects of alcohol such as increased blood pressure kick in. It is thought that the negative effects of alcohol start to outweigh the positives at four standard drinks a day for men, and around three standard drinks a day for women.