Posted on August 12th, 2008 by admin

It is popularly believed that a few drinks are good for the circulation. Many people seem to have been told by doctors that a drink now and then may be especially helpful for angina, because alcohol dilates arteries and may thus forestall angina that occurs from insulin in blood flow to the heart.

While there’s a grain of truth to that belief, the advice itself is bad.
I Inward S. Friedman, M.D., chief of cardiology at the Brooklyn Hospital and associate professor at Downstate Medical Center, State Universilty of New York, told us that research he performed with dogsmrevealed that yes, “alcohol did increase the blood flow to heart tissue.” this “that effect was only seen in heart tissue that was working well
NCI behaving in a normal fashion. But the heart area with the narrowed vessel [the animal had a coronary obstruction] was receiving even less blood than it had been getting before.”

Alcohol dilates blood vessels, Dr. Friedman explains, but a narrowed or obstructed vessel already is dilated as much as possible. “The narrowed vessel cannot take any more blood, so the blood is redistributed away from that area to the good areas of the heart. This might be considered a ‘coronary steal,’ ” he says.

Four shots of hard liquor or four beers taken very quickly could create the same effect in people with heart failure or coronary artery disease, he warns.
Later, Dr. Friedman’s findings were confirmed in humans. A team of physicians from California found that when angina patients drank small amounts of whiskey, they felt pain more quickly when they exerted themselves. Only after drinking five ounces of whiskey did they feel less pain—perhaps because they were feeling no pain.

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