University of Florida researchers have found that an average of a drink a day lowered heart disease in older people. But the benefit didn’t come from reductions in inflammation, which other studies have detected. Reporting in the July 24, 2006, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, a team led by Dr. Cinzia Maraldi of the university’s Institute on Aging collected data on nearly 2,500 adults without heart disease, aged 70 to 79. Half of the group never drank alcohol or only drank occasionally. During an average 5.6 years of follow-up, 397 of the participants died, and 383 suffered some kind of cardiac event. Those who drank lightly to moderately—one to seven drinks of alcohol a week—had a 27.4% lower risk of death and close to a 29% lower risk for heart disease, compared with those people never drank alcohol or did so occasionally. That difference persisted even after the researchers compensated for blood markers of inflammation. “The anti-inflammatory effect doesn’t seem to explain these benefits,” Maraldi said. But don’t think the finding gives you a green light to drink to your heart’s content. Heavy alcohol drinkers were actually more likely to die or experience a dangerous cardiac event than teetotalers or occasional drinkers, the researchers found. One expert thinks that the protective effect of alcohol may be a combination of factors, including anti-inflammatory and vasodilatory (artery-opening) effects. “I don’t think they [the Florida researchers] have proven that it is notan anti-inflammatory effect, that’s pretty hard to know,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine. Still, Siegel thinks that whether alcohol is protective or not, it does have toxic effects on the body, causing damage to the stomach, the liver and the brain. “Overall, alcohol is very bad for us,” Siegel said.
