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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Blood Pressure Increase in Older Men from Heavy
Drinking Counters Good Cholesterol
Risk of stroke - more sensitive to blood pressure
than heart attack - is not substantially lower in moderate drinkers
Aug. 28, 2007 - Although there are studies
indicating that drinking can be good for the heart and boost good
cholesterol levels, a large new study suggests that middle-aged men who
drink heavily could see their blood pressure rise, regardless of whether
their levels of good cholesterol also go up.
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Ichiro Wakabayashi, author of the Japanese study,
also found that the older men who participated all in their 50s were
more susceptible to the blood pressure-boosting effects of heavy
drinking than younger men.
This emphasizes that alcohol is not for everyone,
said Kenneth Mukamal, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at
Harvard Medical School who is familiar with the study findings.
This really fits well with the observation that
the risk of stroke - which is more sensitive to blood pressure than
heart attack - is not really substantially lower in moderate drinkers,
Mukamal said.
According to him, an increase in blood pressure
might eliminate any benefit from higher levels of good cholesterol.
Wakabayashi, of the Hyogo College of Medicine in
Japan, launched the study to explore whether high-density lipoprotein (HDL)
cholesterol which is thought to protect the heart from disease might
play a role in how drinking affects blood pressure in men.
He looked at two groups of male workers, one 20 to
29 years old and the other 50 to 59 in all, 21,301 subjects. All had
periodic health examinations.
Young drinkers with low HDL cholesterol levels were
no more likely to have high blood pressure than were nondrinkers with
similar cholesterol levels.
However, young men who drank heavily and had higher
levels of HDL were more likely than nondrinkers were to have high blood
pressure, suggesting that the good cholesterol did not stop the bad
effects of drinking.
When looking at men of all ages, those with the
lowest level of good cholesterol had the highest blood pressure in all
three groups: nondrinkers, moderate drinkers and heavy drinkers.
However, high levels of good cholesterol HDL did not do as much for the
heavy drinkers.
Among older men, blood pressure was significantly
higher in both light and heavy drinkers, regardless of their HDL
cholesterol levels, according to the study. Author Wakabayashi was not
available for comment.
The findings appear in the September issue of the
journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
So should men of a certain age stop drinking? It
all depends on how much they are imbibing, said Arthur Klatsky, M.D.,
senior consultant in cardiology at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center
in Oakland, Calif.
In middle-aged and older people who have reached
the ages when heart attacks are more common, light to moderate drinking
appears to reduce that risk, said Klatsky, who studies alcohol use and
is familiar with the study findings.
On the other hand, Klatsky said, people who drink
a lot of alcohol ought to drink less or quit. This study doesnt affect
that message one way or another.
Original report by Randy Dotinga, Contributing
Writer, Health Behavior News Service
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