customer of mine from the Tampa area last spring. After a day of drinking and partying here in Key West, he wound up in the hospital with chest pains. This is a very real problem and one that you need to be aware of when you are out partying while on holiday anytime
How Alcohol Increases Your Risk of ‘Holiday Heart
Syndrome’
Scientists have long been aware that heavy drinking increases the odds of heart failure. Although there are
health risks, no one has pinned downed the trigger factor that leads an
alcoholic to cardiac arrhythmias.
A new
study from Sweden now suggests that moderate to heavy consumption of wine and
liquor increases the risk for atrial fibrillation, a condition also known as
‘Holiday Heart Syndrome.’
What
is Atrial Fibrillation?
Atrial
fibrillation, or an irregular heartbeat, is a quivering of the heart that
causes chest pain, shortness of breath and increases the chances of a heart
attack or stroke. Usually it occurs in periodic episodes, but atrial
fibrillation may last for several days. Atrial fibrillation can occur among
people who don’t drink as well, but it is more common in alcohol drinkers.
Details
of the Study
In the
12-year-long study,
Swedish researchers kept track of a group of 79,016 adults between the ages of
45 and 83. In the end they discovered 12,554 cases of atrial fibrillation out
of this population. The results showed an increase in irregular heartbeat for
moderate consumers of alcoholic beverages, which is considered to be one to
three drinks per day.
Furthermore
the risk of fibrillation increased by 8 percent with each alcoholic drink
consumed. The people who drank the most were 50 percent more likely to develop
an arrhythmia.
Interestingly
enough the subjects that chose to drink beer, rather than wine or alcohol, did
not seem to be at as high of a risk. There was no direct relationship found
between binge drinking beer and atrial fibrillation.
Susanna
C. Larsson, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Unit of Nutritional Epidemiology,
Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm,
was lead author of the study. She thinks the new findings about beer may have
to do with the time of the week it is consumed.
According
to Larsson, “It is likely that beer is consumed more regularly during the week,
whereas wine and liquor is more often consumed during weekends only. Adverse
effects of alcohol on atrial fibrillation risk may be less pronounced if
alcohol consumption is spread out over the week compared with consumption of
larger amounts of alcohol during a few days per week.”
The
research was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
There
is controversy amid health care professionals over whether light to moderate
consumption of alcohol leads to atrial fibrillation. However most agree that
moderate to heavy alcohol abuse is a
leading cause of heart problems – no matter what you’re drinking.
