If you are older and regularly have two or more drinks a day, you may be at risk for developing changes in the structure of your heart. A large study has found that elderly people who drink that much have hearts with thicker walls and larger chambers than those who do not. These changes may impair the function of your heart and they appear to be more likely to occur in women.
Although moderate drinking of alcohol has some protective effects against heart attacks, too much alcohol is associated with cardiomyopathy, which is damage to or deterioration of the muscles of the heart.
To determine how much damage to the heart was occurring, researchers used echocardiography to examine the hearts of more than 4,400 people, average age 75. Echocardiography uses ultrasound to view the heart. The participants were grouped by how many drinks per week they said they had; under 7 drinks per week, 7 to 14, or more than 14. About 2,400 people said they did not drink and about 1,500 said they drank less than 7 drinks per day. The researchers found that increased alcohol intake was associated with larger size of both ventricles and atria.
In men, increased drinking was associated with greater mass in the left ventricle. In women, it was associated with a lower ejection fraction in the lower left ventricle. Ejection fraction is a measurement of how well the heart is working. The differences seen between men's and women's hearts could not be explained by differences in body size, age, or other factors, the study noted. It appears that women may be more sensitive to the effects of alcohol on the function of the heart.
The study was published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.
