Can consuming small amounts of alcohol daily will help keep the heart in good shape is a common question faced by many doctors across the country. The presumed benefit of moderate alcohol use was first published in 1926 as a book by American biologist Raymond Pearl based on multiple patient case histories.
He describes the effect of alcohol consumption — from none to heavy drinking — on human survival as a J-shaped curve. The infamous J-curve suggested that when people drank no or very less alcohol (represented by the portion to the left of tipping point of J) they experienced lower survival rate, as did those who drank heavy alcohol (represented by the portion of the right J-point), while those who consumed ‘modest’ amounts of alcohol lived longer. The study and its conclusions gave birth to the myth that moderate alcohol consumption was beneficial. Multiple studies on further larger cohorts of patients, the J-shaped curve and its persistent conclusion that moderate alcohol consumption improved survival stood the test of time.
But an important question remained: why was alcohol, a licensed poison, which kills millions globally each year, improving survival in those who drank modestly? Scientists got on top of it and found an answer — a particular type of heart condition called ischemic heart disease (IHD) in which the arteries that supply the heart become narrowed leading to muscle damage and poor pumping capacity reduced with moderate alcohol use. If IHD was reduced with modest alcohol use, there had to be another reason behind it. A group of doctors from the Maastricht University, Netherlands who began studying it found the answer. In a study published in March 2023 in Cardiovascular Diabetology, they concluded that modest alcohol consumption led to a reduction in damage to tiny vessels that regulate blood flow into heart muscles, called microvascular dysfunction or MVD that was responsible for IHD. And to complement that study, another group of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital found (Journal of the American College of Cardiology) that improved heart health was due to reduction in the stress-related brain network activity with modest alcohol use.
