Call 888-647-0579 to speak with an alcohol or drug abuse counselor.

Who Answers?

Study: Alcohol’s impact on heart, stroke risk differs by gender

Whether drinking alcohol helps or hurts your chances of avoiding heart disease and stroke may depend on your gender as well as how much you imbibe, a new study finds.

The report, which appears online July 11 in the journal Stroke, looked at the drinking habits and lifestyles of more than 80,000 Japanese men and women over a 14-year period. None had previously experienced cancer, stroke or heart disease prior to the study.

Among the findings:

– Men who drank heavily (at least 46 grams of alcohol – roughly four or more standard alcoholic beverages a day) had a 19 percent lower risk of dying from coronary heart disease than nondrinking men. However, these heavy drinkers also had a 48 percent increased risk of death from all types of stroke.

– Women who drank heavily quadrupled their risk of heart disease death compared with women who didn’t drink. Women who drank heavily had a 92 percent higher risk of death from stroke.

– Among women, light drinking (less than 23 grams of alcohol or about two drinks a day) was associated with a 17 percent lower risk of death by heart disease death, but moderate drinking (between 23 grams and 46 grams per day) was linked to an increased risk of 45 percent. Prior studies had suggested that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption might be associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in women.

“An amount of alcohol that may be beneficial for men is not good for women at all,” study co-author Dr. Hiroyasu Iso, a professor of public health at Osaka University in Japan, said in an American Heart Association news release.

Iso noted that one limitation of the study is that the Japanese culture has social restrictions against women drinking as they get older, so the women who drank in the study may have had other factors that affected their heart disease and stroke risk.
________
source: St-Cloud Times, http://www.sctimes.com

More Treatment & Detox Articles

Many unaware of alcohol calories

Many people are unaware of the calorie content of alcohol, a survey shows. Four in 10 did not know a glass of wine has the same calories (120) as a slice of cake, or that a pint of lager and a small sausage roll have 170 each. The poll of 2,000 adults in England was….

Can I Get Insurance for Addiction Treatment?

Many people who find themselves in the need for quality addiction treatment wonder if there are any forms of insurance coverage available to assist in paying for the cost of treatment. While there are not state mandates in every state (not as of yet anyway) there are some ways that you can get insurance for….

Researchers say providing heroin, legal drugs can help most difficult addicts

VANCOUVER — A clinical trial that prescribed heroin to drug addicts found that users did not appear to distinguish the powerful street drug from a legally available prescription painkiller, researchers say. And that offers hope of a treatment option that is legally and politically more palatable than providing drug addicts with heroin, they say. Users….

Alcohol abuse by GIs soars since ’03

The rate of Army soldiers enrolled in treatment programs for alcohol dependency or abuse has nearly doubled since 2003 — a sign of the growing stress of repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Army statistics and interviews. Soldiers diagnosed by Army substance abuse counselors with alcoholism or alcohol abuse, such as binge drinking,….

Use science to bolster ‘just say no’ message

With high school graduation season in full swing, many parents are worried that alcohol may play a harmful role in their teens’ celebrations. An organization that studies teen drinking says parents should assume their teens will drink, and should use science to try to dissuade them. The Science Inside Alcohol Project advises parents to explain….