Too much alcohol can change heart structure

A new study has found even “moderate” drinking can cause “abnormal” changes in the heart’s structure and function in older people.

The more alcohol the people in the study consumed, the more pronounced the changes were in the heart’s structure

The research, reported in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, examined data collected from 4,466 elderly people at the average age of 76 years old about their weekly alcohol consumption.

Scientists found that the more alcohol participants consumed, the more pronounced the changes were in the heart’s structure and its ability to function.

For men, their consumption began to alter the heart after more than two drinks per day, or 14 or more drinks a week; the heart’s left ventricle wall starts to enlarge, causing it to work harder to pump the same amount of blood, and resulting in weakening of the organ.

In women, these changes appeared when women drank just more than one drink a day, and in addition these women suffered a sleigh reduction in heart function in comparison with women who drink less.

Dr. Scott Solomon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of non-invasive cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, lead the study.

He said: “A little bit of alcohol may be beneficial, but too much is clearly going to be toxic.

“Once you get beyond two drinks a day in men, you get into the realm where you start to see subtle evidence of cardiotoxic effects on the heart that might over the long term lead to problems. And that threshold might be lower in women.”

However, a recent report in the European Heart Journal found that moderate drinkers have a lower risk of heart failure than both heavy drinkers and those who do not drink at all.