Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital have found something interesting about how small to moderate amounts of alcohol might help protect the heart.
Their study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, looks at how alcohol may lower the risk of heart disease by reducing stress signals in the brain.
The lead researcher, Dr. Ahmed Tawakol, is a heart doctor who wants to understand the connection between alcohol, the brain, and heart health.
He made it clear that the team is not telling people to start drinking alcohol to avoid heart attacks or strokes. Instead, they want to learn how alcohol affects the body so they can find safer ways to protect the heart in the future.
For years, some studies have shown that people who drink a small amount of alcohol—like one drink a day for women or up to two for men—might have a lower chance of getting heart disease. But experts weren’t sure if alcohol itself was the reason, or if those people just had healthier habits overall.
To explore this question, Dr. Tawakol’s team looked at health data from over 50,000 people in a medical database called the Mass General Brigham Biobank. They found that those who drank moderate amounts of alcohol had fewer heart problems, even when the researchers took into account things like diet, exercise, and income level.
The team also examined brain scans from 754 people to learn how alcohol affects the brain. They found that moderate drinkers had fewer stress signals in a part of the brain called the amygdala. This area helps us react to stress. People who didn’t drink or who drank very little had more stress activity in this brain region.
Lower stress signals in the amygdala were linked to fewer heart problems, like heart attacks and strokes. The researchers believe that moderate alcohol use might calm the brain’s stress response over time.
When the amygdala is often active, it can raise your heart rate and blood pressure and increase inflammation in the body. All of these things are bad for your heart and can lead to serious diseases.
They also found that the possible protective effect of alcohol was even stronger in people who live with chronic stress, like those who often feel anxious. For them, moderate alcohol use seemed to make an even bigger difference in heart health.
But the researchers also warned that alcohol has risks. Even small amounts can raise the chance of getting cancer. Drinking too much can damage the brain and heart. So while the findings are interesting, they do not suggest that people should start or increase drinking.
What’s next? The team wants to find other ways to reduce stress in the brain without alcohol. They are now studying how things like exercise, mindfulness, and some medications might lower brain stress and protect the heart in a similar way.
In short, this study helps us understand one possible way alcohol might help the heart—by calming the brain’s stress response. But because alcohol has serious downsides, the real hope is to find safer methods to get the same benefits.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that Changing blood pressure readings is a hidden sign of heart disease and common type 2 diabetes drugs may raise heart risk.
For more information about heart health, please read studies about root cause of heart rhythm disorders and Warning signal from the kidneys can predict future heart failure risk.
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