“Red wine has also demonstrated anti-inflammatory effects,” says Gould. A 2024 study found that drinking red wine may significantly decrease certain markers of inflammation related to atherosclerosis—plaque buildup on the artery walls. Interestingly, this was true for healthy adults but not for people at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
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On the heels of the surgeon general’s warning about the cancer risks of alcohol, there’s a growing consensus that less is better. https://thetowelring.com/do-some-drinks-cause-dehydration/ Unfortunately, you won’t get quite as many health-promoting antioxidants. “White wine does have antioxidants, but they are not as strong, so it does not have the same beneficial heart effects as red wine has,” says Gould. There is widespread agreement that heavy drinking is not good for you — doctors and scientists have known for literally centuries that a lot of drinking is dangerous. For this reason, your liver is particularly vulnerable to damage from alcohol intake. Showing your patients a standard drink chart (printable here PDF – 184 KB) will help inform them about drink equivalents and may help your patients estimate their consumption more accurately.
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- These people — about 8% of the world’s population — often experience facial flushing and a rapid heartbeat after just one drink.
- With each additional drink per day, they put themselves at higher risk for lost years of life and function.
- With so much data and so many variables, public health recommendations concerning alcohol differ around the world.
- Even a single daily drink may raise the risk of cardiovascular disease.
But antioxidants in red wine may increase levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, also called the “good” cholesterol, and protect against cholesterol buildup. Resveratrol might be key to what could make red wine heart healthy. Learn the facts and hype about red wine and how it affects the heart.
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After ethanol becomes acetaldehyde, it continues breaking down into non-toxic byproducts. But some people’s enzymes work more slowly than others, which leaves them exposed to acetaldehyde and its toxic effects longer, Wakeman says. Damage can also compound if someone has multiple risky habits, like drinking heavily and smoking cigarettes, she adds. After you drink any kind of booze—vodka, wine, sake, you name it—enzymes in your body get to work metabolizing the alcohol (chemically known as ethanol) in your system. Alcohol affects the body in numerous ways, both in the short and long term.
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This can cause a sudden drop in kidney function known as “acute kidney injury.” When this happens, dialysis is needed until a person’s kidney function returns to normal. Acute kidney injury usually goes away in time, but in some cases, it can lead to lasting kidney damage. “For women, heavy drinking is eight standard drinks a week or more,” says Dr. Wakim-Fleming, “While for men, it’s 15 drinks a week or more.” And, yes, multiple binges within a week do equal heavy drinking. Plenty of factors influence how damaging acetaldehyde is to the body, Wakeman says. The most obvious is the amount of alcohol consumed; a heavy drinker will be exposed to more acetaldehyde than Oxford House a light drinker, leading to more damage.
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This means that after a woman and a man of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) will tend to be higher, putting her at greater risk for harm. Atrial fibrillation (A-fib) is an irregular heartbeat, often a very rapid heart rhythm. Atrial fibrillation increases the risk of serious medical conditions, such as heart attack and stroke. Alcohol interferes with the heart’s electrical signals, which can contribute to atrial fibrillation and weaken how the heart pumps, explains Campbell. While data conflicts on one glass of alcohol’s effects on A-fib, people who abstain from alcohol appear to have the lowest risk of developing A-fib.
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Other factors linked with alcohol intake may contribute to drinkers’ well-being. For instance, a study published in March 2022 in JAMA Network Open found that moderate drinkers had the lowest heart disease risk compared with nondrinkers, suggesting that some alcohol intake may benefit heart health. The evidence does not support the idea that we all need to be teetotalers. A recent study from the National Academies found that people who consumed moderate amounts had a lower risk of heart attacks and death from heart disease, compared to people is alcohol good for you who never drink alcohol. Researchers have since discovered it’s more than just their wine consumption that sets French people apart.
Alcohol is classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. “Excessive or long-term consumption of alcohol has been linked to an increased risk of various types of cancer,” says Manaker. This includes oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, liver, colorectal and breast cancers. Because it turns out the story about the health effects of moderate drinking is shifting pretty dramatically.
So non-alcoholic Guinness must basically be a super health drink then?
In fact, research has found that red wine may provide more benefits than white wine. Coming back to your question, if you didn’t know alcohol is a carcinogen, you’re not alone. I learned in my reporting that only 40 percent of people know alcohol is a carcinogen, which shows there’s still a lot of work to do in educating people about the health risks. What has stuck out to me in reporting about alcohol is that the problem isn’t so much the substance itself as it is widespread misunderstanding about what moderate drinking means. Your risk starts to increase pretty exponentially once you’re having more than one or two drinks at a given sitting, especially if you’re drinking every day. Drinking alcohol appears to increase food and calorie intake during a drinking episode, which increases total calorie intake in a day.