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American Morning
The Big Question: Is Drinking Good for Your Heart?
Aired March 13, 2002 - 07:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour: Is drinking good for your heart? Well a new study just released has found that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can actually lower a woman's risk of developing hypertension.
And CNN medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, has reviewed the study. She joins us now with more -- good morning.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning -- good morning.
This study, Paula, looked at moderate drinking and blood pressure in 70,000 women, so a huge study. These are young women age 25 to 42. And what the study found, is that if a woman drank moderately, and that means if she had one half to one drink per day it decreased her risk of getting high blood pressure -- one half to one drink per day. However, if she drank more than two drinks per day, that increased her risk of high blood pressure.
So there is a relatively thin line there. And so moderate drinking -- but that may not be moderate to everybody. But according to this study and many others, moderate drinking, which can help your heart, is one drink a day for women, two drinks a day for men.
Now let's take a look, because, you know, a drink is not the same for everybody.
ZAHN: Well, no.
COHEN: Some people have different definitions of what a drink is. So we brought some examples here A drink, according to all these studies, is four ounces of wine -- this isn't really wine, this is cranberry juice. I feel compelled to say that.
ZAHN: OK. We're happy to hear that. Though we weren't too concerned anyway (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this morning.
COHEN: But this really is beer -- or 12 ounces of beer or a shot of spirits. So it's not one of these -- you know, you see those big steins of beer sometimes, that is not what this is. These each would constitute a drink.
ZAHN: And does the study identify for us what is better to drink to receive this benefit of decreased blood pressure? COHEN: You know what's interesting about this is that if you remember years ago, there was this whole French paradox thing and, "Oh, the French drink red wine and that must be why, you know, they have so much less heart disease than Americans do." And, actually, in the years that have passed since, that's turned out not to be true. Alcohol is alcohol is alcohol. It seems to raise the good cholesterol, which is why it seems to have this effect. And it doesn't really seem to matter what you drink.
ZAHN: So the doctor is not going to say you have to drink a glass of wine every night (UNINTELLIGIBLE) beer. It makes no different at all.
COHEN: Right. Correct -- correct.
ZAHN: So based on this study, will we see doctors across the country actually recommending to women...
COHEN: No.
ZAHN: ... women who are not pregnant, we should make clear, to drink?
COHEN: Right. No, actually that probably will not happen. One of the major reasons is that other studies -- just to make this more confusing -- have found that even just one drink a day can increase a woman's risk, just slightly, of getting breast cancer.
ZAHN: Wow.
COHEN: And so doctors aren't going to say that. What a doctor might do, is if a woman came to her doctor, she didn't have any risk for breast cancer, no family history, but she did have a risk for heart disease, let's say, and she might say, "You know what, doc, I don't drink, but maybe a drink a day wouldn't be a bad thing?" And the doctor might say, "You know what, it might not be a bad thing. Go ahead and do it."
But the doctors that I've talked to said that they wouldn't bring it up to their patients. They wouldn't say, "You know, Paula, you need to start drinking. You just don't drink enough." They just don't feel comfortable doing that, even though it's a drink a day. They're afraid it's going to spiral into much more than that.
ZAHN: So ultimately, these studies are very confusing. Because you say on one hand, if you were to do this properly and drink the right amount, whether it's four ounces or whatever, if there was a history of breast cancer in your family, that potentially could increase your risk to breast cancer.
COHEN: Exactly. And all of these studies are in some ways sort of in the infant stages, so they're still trying to figure it out. But, right, that gets very confusing for women. Obviously, that breast cancer risk isn't there so much for men. But, again, what a doctor would do is they would sit down with a woman and say, "What's your family history? What do you have a risk of? What's your cholesterol level? If you have low, good cholesterol and we want to raise it, then maybe you should have a drink a day." But they would take all of these factors into account and individualize it for each woman.
ZAHN: It is interesting that this study is pegged to women. Is there a parallel study out there for men?
COHEN: There have been studies for men that have shown sort of various things about alcohol consumption. One that looks at this kind of moderate drinking has not been done quite in this way for men yet.
ZAHN: I'll stick with the cranberry juice this morning.
COHEN: There you go -- exactly.
ZAHN: Thanks for bringing that by. Good to see you.
COHEN: Good to see you.
ZAHN: And in person, for a change.
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