But don’t be too quick to toast the finding, which is based on a comparison of 340 heartattack survivors with the same number of heart-healthy controls. For one thing, drinking can cause high blood pressure, stroke, cirrhosis of the liver, car crashes, impaired cognitive abilities, birth defects and possibly breast and bowel cancer. And moderate drinking often turns into heavy drinking, which clearly hurts the heart. The difference between two drinks a day and five, write the scientists, “may mean the difference between preventing and causing disease.”
They therefore stop short of recommending that teetotalers fall off the wagon, or that social drinkers imbibe more often (having just a few drinks a month lowers heart-attack risk by 17 percent). It depends on whether the reduced risk of heart disease outweighs the increased risk of, say, breast cancer. Everyone, with a physician’s help, has to work out his or her own individual risks and benefits.
