Getting drunk boosts heart attack risk

Drinking alcohol in moderation is good for women's health, as getting drunk raises their risk of having a heart attack. There is considerable evidence that drinking moderately can lower heart disease risk, but there is less information on how patterns of drinking influence risk for women. Researchers from the University at Buffalo, New York found that women who drank regularly were at lower risk of having a non-fatal heart attack than their peers who abstained from alcohol, or got drunk once a month or more. If it's enough to slur your speech or alter your behaviour it's too much, even for your heart. It's the kind of a marker for a whole different lifestyle. Women who get intoxicated might be very different from those who don't. It may also be a marker for the way certain women metabolise alcohol. For some women, a single drink is enough to bring on intoxication. To investigate, the researchers compared 320 women who had suffered non-fatal heart attacks with 1,565 healthy controls. Overall, 13 percent of the study participants had never been drinkers, while those who drank alcohol consumed an average of about 2 drinks on the days that they drank. Among the heart attack patients, nearly 9 percent reported drinking enough to become intoxicated on occasion, compared to 1 percent of the controls. Women who drank as little as one or fewer drinks on days when they drank had a significantly lower risk of heart attack than abstainers, while those who drank three drinks a day had about half the risk of abstainers, as did those who drank daily. However, women who reported getting drunk at least once a month had three times the risk of abstainers, while their risk was more than six times greater than that of women who drank alcohol, but never got drunk. The findings suggest that if you don't drink, don't start. But light to moderate consumption of alcohol, without getting drunk, does appear to lower heart attack risk.