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Study: Daily Consumption of Alcohol Can Cut Risk of Heart Attack

Aired January 09, 2003 - 08:04   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Medical news, Paula, now. We have heard before that moderate drinking can be beneficial to your health. There is a new study right now that goes a step further, saying that daily consumption of alcohol can cut the risk of heart attack in men by as much as 37 percent as compared to non-drinkers.
Back to Atlanta, the CNN Center, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta explained this.

It raised a lot of eyebrows here. What gives?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'll tell you, we've heard a lot for a long time, rather, about alcohol and the potential benefits on the heart. Certainly we heard about that with red wine. But as you mentioned, Bill, there's a new study out now, a large study looking at the fact that all types of alcohol, be it beer, be it red wine, white wine, hard liquor, can all have some degree of benefit on the heart, as well.

You can take a look at the study, the study is from the "New England Journal of Medicine" and they actually looked at 38,000 people, all health care professionals. And here's what, some of what they found.

One to two drinks a week led to a 12 percent lower risk. That's compared to their non-drinking counterparts. Take that all the way up to five to seven times a week, that number 37 percent, Bill, you quoted that, 37 percent lower risk of heart disease, again, compared to the non-drinking counterparts.

Highest, lowest risk, highest benefit, that really came from drinking about three to four drinks per week. You can see there, three to four drinks per week and you actually, one to two drinks per day, I should say, and you actually had about a 32 percent lower risk. That's your biggest bang for your buck right there, Bill.

As you mentioned, this is the first time the study actually has looked at other types of alcohol besides just red wine. We've heard about red wine for so long. What this study actually found is that some of the other types of alcohol, such as beer, might actually provide you a slightly increased benefit even over red wine.

So certainly it raised a lot of eyebrows here, as well, Bill, but there does appear to be some benefit from drinking alcohol on your heart -- Bill.

HEMMER: Medically speaking, how is it they believe that alcohol could help the heart?

GUPTA: Yes, well, this is something that's actually been studied quite a bit. There is a lot of different ways that alcohol actually appears to benefit. Take a look at the list there. It decreases inflammation. That's inflammation in the blood vessels. It decreases oxidation. That, what that basically means is it reduces the likelihood of developing something called hardening of the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks. It raises your good kind of cholesterol, the HDL. That's something that alcohol does that some of the other medications such as aspirin don't do. It also provides a little bit of a blood thinning effect, which also appears to decrease the risk of heart attacks.

Bill, let me point out, as well, I think the reason that it raises a lot of eyebrows is because while you see those good effects, there are obviously the risks of alcohol, as well, both short-term and long-term. Take a look at the list of some of those. Just drinking in small amounts, even, while it may help your heart, slows down your brain activity, it interferes with your sleep, sexual function, produces headaches, perhaps, raises blood pressure. If you're a chronic drinker, there are even some other sort of side effects. You could see some of the side effects there, liver, lung, kidney, heart disease, actually, if you drink too much, stroke, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, obesity.

Bill, there's a lot of reasons not to drink alcohol, not to think of alcohol as a medicine. But here's an interesting study, as you pointed out.

HEMMER: So what do you do, go out and drink?

GUPTA: Well, here's the bottom -- some people will go out and drink. But I think that the bottom line, you know, I'd be interested to hear what all the, how the other doctors that are seeing cardiac patients weigh on this.

HEMMER: Yes, excellent.

GUPTA: But actually, if you think about heart disease, I would not think about alcohol as a medicine. If you are someone who drinks, what they have found is actually spacing out your drinking. It's the frequency of drinking, not so much the amount of drinking, which appears to have some sort of benefit. So if you're a drinker, you drink a few drinks a week, space them out over the week, space it out over the week.

If you're not a drinker, there are other ways to try and treat heart disease, to try and stave off heart disease other than drinking alcohol, so don't go out and start drinking.

The bottom line, alcohol is not a medicine. Every medicine needs to be thought of in terms of its risks and benefits and alcohol has significant risks. So I'd be surprised if doctors start prescribing it to treat heart disease -- Bill.

HEMMER: Well, that was my exact question. Thank you, Sanjay.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

More on this now with Paula -- Paula.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: So you want to know what other doctors think?

HEMMER: Yes, we do.

ZAHN: Let's find out right now.

What would you make of a study that says it's not what you drink, but how often you drink that helps the heart?

Joining us now for a healthy debate, let's check in with Dean Ornish, a cardiologist, who joins us from the University of California. You know this guy's books on diets and healthy hearts. And also joining us from Los Angeles this morning, addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky. Good to see you, as well.

We woke you guys up early this morning.

All right, Dr. Pinsky, I'm going to start with you first. You treat alcoholics. Are you concerned that they could look at this study and view it as yet another way to look at alcohol as a medicine?

DR. DREW PINSKY, ADDICTION SPECIALIST: Absolutely. Denial is part of the disease of alcoholism and this further fuels their denial. People that may be incipient in this disease, people who may be full blown in this disease look at these kinds of studies and say, "See, honey? See why I drink? It's good for me."

It's unfortunate when people look at very, very specific scientists studies and try to make a headline out of them. This study is not about a headline. This is about collecting information about alcohol's effect and its end point effect on the heart, myocardial infarction or heart attack.

This study doesn't even really address heart disease per se. It just talks about heart attacks. The editorial in the "New England Journal" very appropriately suggests that there are many, many other reasons not to suggest drinking and replacing one disease with another is certainly not a medical advance.

ZAHN: So, Dr. Dean Ornish, how do you view this study and what would you tell your patients who say look, maybe a drink a day will help me.

DR. DEAN ORNISH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA: Well, I'm certainly not against drinking. But I agree with Dr. Pinsky that, first of all, this study doesn't prove that drinking is good for you. It found that people had fewer heart attacks who drink. But it increased their risk of death from other causes. So I'm not sure that's such a great trade-off. And, you know, the question is why did they have fewer heart attacks? And this study doesn't really address that because it wasn't looking at causation.

It also turned out that people who were not drinking very much had higher diabetes. They had higher saturated fat intake. They had a higher intake of transfatty acids. They had less exercise. And so the point is with this kind of study, you can't tell if it was the from alcohol or from the other what are called confounding factors.

Now, my own belief is you have to say who are the people who are drinking moderately? And in our culture, that's how people manage stress. You know, when you get a little high, you hang out with your friends, you let down your emotional defenses. We call it happy hour. So it may be that we know that stress is a major cause of precipitating heart attacks and the more you drink, if that's how people manage stress, that may be why they're reducing their risk of heart attacks.

But there are better ways of managing stress that aren't centered around alcohol that may be equally effective in preventing heart attacks that don't have the toxicities of alcohol.

ZAHN: And what would those be?

ORNISH: Well, things like meditation, yoga, exercise, spending time with your friends and family. You know, study after study has shown that people who feel lonely and depressed and isolated are many times more likely to get sick and die prematurely, not only from heart attacks, but from all causes. And so it may be that it's a confounding effect that it's not the alcohol per se but getting together with your friends and managing stress. And if we can find ways of doing that that aren't centered around alcohol, then you can get the benefits without the toxicities and the risks.

PINSKY: If I could...

ZAHN: So, Dr. Pinsky, we've heard both you and your colleague make abundantly clear you think there are a bunch of holes in this study. What is the bottom line on it, then?

PINSKY: You know what? That's the point. The bottom line is that this is an excellent study and it answers a very, very specific question, it is is moderate alcohol, the type of alcohol, the relationship with food, increase or decrease your risk of a heart attack, meaning the rupture of a plaque within the vessels of the heart? It answers that question clearly.

What we need to watch out for is to take a very, very, very specific scientific study that answers a specific question and try to generalize to all people and clinical recommendations. If anything, I would say the caveat is watch out for medical headlines. Be careful. Know your risk of alcoholism. If you have a parent with alcoholism, your risk is about 50 percent of having that genetic potential. This study may not apply to you.

This study just pushes forward a little bit our understanding of the relationship between alcohol and the event of a heart attack.

ZAHN: Dr. Ornish, a final thought on how you think some people might abuse this study or misinterpret its findings.

ORNISH: Well, it's like Dr. Pinsky said, you know, I mean the headline is alcohol is good for your heart so I'm going to go out and drink more. And I think it would be a real mistake, again, I'm not against drinking. But I think it would be a real mistake for people who are not drinkers to start on the basis of this study or for people who are drinking to start drinking more, thinking that's somehow going to be good for them.

You know, by analogy, there were studies like this that were epidemiological studies that made it look like hormone replacement therapy could help prevent heart attacks in women. And when they finally did a randomized controlled trial, a couple of them, they found out it actually didn't, that the people who were taking hormones were also doing other things that were good for them, and that may also be true here.

ZAHN: Well, it's interesting you mention that, because a little bit later on this morning we're talking about estrogen and the new concern from the Food and Drug Administration about how we need to label all the drugs that, you know, contain estrogen because of some of the concerns they have about health risks down the road.

Well, that's another subject we're going to have to tackle a little bit later on this morning.

Dr. Dean Ornish, good to see you again.

ORNISH: Thanks, Paula. You, too.

ZAHN: You, too, Dr. Drew Pinsky.

PINSKY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: And we're grateful that you'd be willing to get up at 3:30 in the morning to join us this morning. You make so much sense at this ungodly hour on the West Coast.

PINSKY: Well, thanks again.

ZAHN: Take care.

ORNISH: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Attack>


Aired January 9, 2003 - 08:04   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Medical news, Paula, now. We have heard before that moderate drinking can be beneficial to your health. There is a new study right now that goes a step further, saying that daily consumption of alcohol can cut the risk of heart attack in men by as much as 37 percent as compared to non-drinkers.
Back to Atlanta, the CNN Center, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta explained this.

It raised a lot of eyebrows here. What gives?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'll tell you, we've heard a lot for a long time, rather, about alcohol and the potential benefits on the heart. Certainly we heard about that with red wine. But as you mentioned, Bill, there's a new study out now, a large study looking at the fact that all types of alcohol, be it beer, be it red wine, white wine, hard liquor, can all have some degree of benefit on the heart, as well.

You can take a look at the study, the study is from the "New England Journal of Medicine" and they actually looked at 38,000 people, all health care professionals. And here's what, some of what they found.

One to two drinks a week led to a 12 percent lower risk. That's compared to their non-drinking counterparts. Take that all the way up to five to seven times a week, that number 37 percent, Bill, you quoted that, 37 percent lower risk of heart disease, again, compared to the non-drinking counterparts.

Highest, lowest risk, highest benefit, that really came from drinking about three to four drinks per week. You can see there, three to four drinks per week and you actually, one to two drinks per day, I should say, and you actually had about a 32 percent lower risk. That's your biggest bang for your buck right there, Bill.

As you mentioned, this is the first time the study actually has looked at other types of alcohol besides just red wine. We've heard about red wine for so long. What this study actually found is that some of the other types of alcohol, such as beer, might actually provide you a slightly increased benefit even over red wine.

So certainly it raised a lot of eyebrows here, as well, Bill, but there does appear to be some benefit from drinking alcohol on your heart -- Bill.

HEMMER: Medically speaking, how is it they believe that alcohol could help the heart?

GUPTA: Yes, well, this is something that's actually been studied quite a bit. There is a lot of different ways that alcohol actually appears to benefit. Take a look at the list there. It decreases inflammation. That's inflammation in the blood vessels. It decreases oxidation. That, what that basically means is it reduces the likelihood of developing something called hardening of the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks. It raises your good kind of cholesterol, the HDL. That's something that alcohol does that some of the other medications such as aspirin don't do. It also provides a little bit of a blood thinning effect, which also appears to decrease the risk of heart attacks.

Bill, let me point out, as well, I think the reason that it raises a lot of eyebrows is because while you see those good effects, there are obviously the risks of alcohol, as well, both short-term and long-term. Take a look at the list of some of those. Just drinking in small amounts, even, while it may help your heart, slows down your brain activity, it interferes with your sleep, sexual function, produces headaches, perhaps, raises blood pressure. If you're a chronic drinker, there are even some other sort of side effects. You could see some of the side effects there, liver, lung, kidney, heart disease, actually, if you drink too much, stroke, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, obesity.

Bill, there's a lot of reasons not to drink alcohol, not to think of alcohol as a medicine. But here's an interesting study, as you pointed out.

HEMMER: So what do you do, go out and drink?

GUPTA: Well, here's the bottom -- some people will go out and drink. But I think that the bottom line, you know, I'd be interested to hear what all the, how the other doctors that are seeing cardiac patients weigh on this.

HEMMER: Yes, excellent.

GUPTA: But actually, if you think about heart disease, I would not think about alcohol as a medicine. If you are someone who drinks, what they have found is actually spacing out your drinking. It's the frequency of drinking, not so much the amount of drinking, which appears to have some sort of benefit. So if you're a drinker, you drink a few drinks a week, space them out over the week, space it out over the week.

If you're not a drinker, there are other ways to try and treat heart disease, to try and stave off heart disease other than drinking alcohol, so don't go out and start drinking.

The bottom line, alcohol is not a medicine. Every medicine needs to be thought of in terms of its risks and benefits and alcohol has significant risks. So I'd be surprised if doctors start prescribing it to treat heart disease -- Bill.

HEMMER: Well, that was my exact question. Thank you, Sanjay.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

More on this now with Paula -- Paula.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: So you want to know what other doctors think?

HEMMER: Yes, we do.

ZAHN: Let's find out right now.

What would you make of a study that says it's not what you drink, but how often you drink that helps the heart?

Joining us now for a healthy debate, let's check in with Dean Ornish, a cardiologist, who joins us from the University of California. You know this guy's books on diets and healthy hearts. And also joining us from Los Angeles this morning, addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky. Good to see you, as well.

We woke you guys up early this morning.

All right, Dr. Pinsky, I'm going to start with you first. You treat alcoholics. Are you concerned that they could look at this study and view it as yet another way to look at alcohol as a medicine?

DR. DREW PINSKY, ADDICTION SPECIALIST: Absolutely. Denial is part of the disease of alcoholism and this further fuels their denial. People that may be incipient in this disease, people who may be full blown in this disease look at these kinds of studies and say, "See, honey? See why I drink? It's good for me."

It's unfortunate when people look at very, very specific scientists studies and try to make a headline out of them. This study is not about a headline. This is about collecting information about alcohol's effect and its end point effect on the heart, myocardial infarction or heart attack.

This study doesn't even really address heart disease per se. It just talks about heart attacks. The editorial in the "New England Journal" very appropriately suggests that there are many, many other reasons not to suggest drinking and replacing one disease with another is certainly not a medical advance.

ZAHN: So, Dr. Dean Ornish, how do you view this study and what would you tell your patients who say look, maybe a drink a day will help me.

DR. DEAN ORNISH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA: Well, I'm certainly not against drinking. But I agree with Dr. Pinsky that, first of all, this study doesn't prove that drinking is good for you. It found that people had fewer heart attacks who drink. But it increased their risk of death from other causes. So I'm not sure that's such a great trade-off. And, you know, the question is why did they have fewer heart attacks? And this study doesn't really address that because it wasn't looking at causation.

It also turned out that people who were not drinking very much had higher diabetes. They had higher saturated fat intake. They had a higher intake of transfatty acids. They had less exercise. And so the point is with this kind of study, you can't tell if it was the from alcohol or from the other what are called confounding factors.

Now, my own belief is you have to say who are the people who are drinking moderately? And in our culture, that's how people manage stress. You know, when you get a little high, you hang out with your friends, you let down your emotional defenses. We call it happy hour. So it may be that we know that stress is a major cause of precipitating heart attacks and the more you drink, if that's how people manage stress, that may be why they're reducing their risk of heart attacks.

But there are better ways of managing stress that aren't centered around alcohol that may be equally effective in preventing heart attacks that don't have the toxicities of alcohol.

ZAHN: And what would those be?

ORNISH: Well, things like meditation, yoga, exercise, spending time with your friends and family. You know, study after study has shown that people who feel lonely and depressed and isolated are many times more likely to get sick and die prematurely, not only from heart attacks, but from all causes. And so it may be that it's a confounding effect that it's not the alcohol per se but getting together with your friends and managing stress. And if we can find ways of doing that that aren't centered around alcohol, then you can get the benefits without the toxicities and the risks.

PINSKY: If I could...

ZAHN: So, Dr. Pinsky, we've heard both you and your colleague make abundantly clear you think there are a bunch of holes in this study. What is the bottom line on it, then?

PINSKY: You know what? That's the point. The bottom line is that this is an excellent study and it answers a very, very specific question, it is is moderate alcohol, the type of alcohol, the relationship with food, increase or decrease your risk of a heart attack, meaning the rupture of a plaque within the vessels of the heart? It answers that question clearly.

What we need to watch out for is to take a very, very, very specific scientific study that answers a specific question and try to generalize to all people and clinical recommendations. If anything, I would say the caveat is watch out for medical headlines. Be careful. Know your risk of alcoholism. If you have a parent with alcoholism, your risk is about 50 percent of having that genetic potential. This study may not apply to you.

This study just pushes forward a little bit our understanding of the relationship between alcohol and the event of a heart attack.

ZAHN: Dr. Ornish, a final thought on how you think some people might abuse this study or misinterpret its findings.

ORNISH: Well, it's like Dr. Pinsky said, you know, I mean the headline is alcohol is good for your heart so I'm going to go out and drink more. And I think it would be a real mistake, again, I'm not against drinking. But I think it would be a real mistake for people who are not drinkers to start on the basis of this study or for people who are drinking to start drinking more, thinking that's somehow going to be good for them.

You know, by analogy, there were studies like this that were epidemiological studies that made it look like hormone replacement therapy could help prevent heart attacks in women. And when they finally did a randomized controlled trial, a couple of them, they found out it actually didn't, that the people who were taking hormones were also doing other things that were good for them, and that may also be true here.

ZAHN: Well, it's interesting you mention that, because a little bit later on this morning we're talking about estrogen and the new concern from the Food and Drug Administration about how we need to label all the drugs that, you know, contain estrogen because of some of the concerns they have about health risks down the road.

Well, that's another subject we're going to have to tackle a little bit later on this morning.

Dr. Dean Ornish, good to see you again.

ORNISH: Thanks, Paula. You, too.

ZAHN: You, too, Dr. Drew Pinsky.

PINSKY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: And we're grateful that you'd be willing to get up at 3:30 in the morning to join us this morning. You make so much sense at this ungodly hour on the West Coast.

PINSKY: Well, thanks again.

ZAHN: Take care.

ORNISH: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Attack>