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Journalism of Courage
Before I begin to talk about watching your drinks on new year’s eve, let me just remind you that there’s nothing too special about the last day of the year to risk your heart over. The earth has just gone around the sun another time and that’s not such a milestone to overindulge. Alcohol is indeed toxic for the heart.
No doctor will recommend a drink but men should not cross two drinks (assuming each drink is 30 ml, this means 60 ml of hard liquor or 24 gram of alcohol) while women should confine themselves to just a single drink. Anything over this amount would qualify as binge-drinking and is directly toxic to the heart muscle and the heart’s conduction system, which basically means the electrical impulses of the heart.
CAN A NON-HABITUAL DRINKER HAVE A CARDIAC RISK AFTER BINGE DRINKING?
A body which is not used to alcohol can react to binge drinking suddenly. A recent research on 200 partygoers, who had quite a few drinks, found that they had cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) over 48 hours. In an unprepared and seemingly healthy heart, such irregular rhythms may lead to malfunctioning of electrical impulses and the heart stopping suddenly. This is called sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).
Alcohol is one of the strongest cell toxins that exist, so it can cause serious damage to the heart muscle. When its levels go up in the body, the heart’s upper chambers or atria can’t contract or pump blood properly into your lower chambers or ventricles. Your ventricles may get 140 to 160 signals per minute instead of the normal 60 to 100 per minute. This mismatch leads to the blood coagulating and forming clots. And sometimes these clots get dislodged, travel to the brain and cause strokes. The heart cannot pump enough oxygenated blood to meet the body’s requirements, triggering heart failure.
Consuming too much alcohol at one go damages your heart, stretching, enlarging and, therefore, weakening it. This is called alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy when the heart cannot pump as well as it should. This reduces your body’s available oxygen supply. This condition can affect anyone who consumes too much alcohol, even those who don’t have alcohol use disorder.
However, it’s more likely to happen in people with alcohol use disorders or who have genetic mutations that cause them to process alcohol more slowly in their bodies. There’s evidence that repeated binge drinking may also be enough to increase your risk of this condition.
SYMPTOMS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT
Signs include breathlessness, fatigue, palpitations, light-headedness, edema and coughing. In most cases, abstaining from alcohol will take care of the condition. Just reducing alcohol intake to light or moderate levels can show improvements. But that doesn’t mean you stretch your body to the limits.
DOS AND DON’T’S
How then should one have alcohol? A person with high risk factors should not drink, period. Drink slowly and focus on conversations with friends. Begin with mocktails. Keep yourself hydrated to avoid electrolyte imbalance, which may affect the heart’s electrical impulses. Have food alongside.
Don’t go to the gym the morning after and rest reasonably well. Alcohol can increase your heart rate and physical activity increases it even more. This can put extra stress on your heart. A little discipline goes a long way.
(Dr Ranjan Shetty is interventional cardiologist at Manipal Hospitals, Bengaluru)
