EATING & DRINKING: Consume wisely

BLOGGERNOTE: For centuries wines and foods were combined, consumed and enjoyed with foods at meal times - especially in French culture that resulted in "heart healthy diets" with positive lifestyle effects and cardiovascular health.

Not too much was "fast-and-casual" except for a rendezvous danguerese.

Full-course meals featured bread-and-butter and pairing different wines with difference courses in succession, ending with a salad and cheeses-and-fruits.

Other European cultures included an intermezzo - frequently a gelato.

Distilled spirits, on the other hand, were something else although Italians produced grappa as a digestif

In general, a normal resting heart rate for adults is between 60 and 100 beats per minute.

The researchers found that consuming one standard drink — generally defined as a 12-ounce beer, a five-ounce glass of wine or a cocktail containing 1.5 ounces of liquor — tended to elevate the participants’ heart rates by about five beats per minute in the six hours that followed.

With two or more drinks, the increase in heart rate was greater, and heart rates remained slightly elevated up to 24 hours later.

Ask Well

Can Drinking Alcohol Raise Your Heart Rate?

Drinking can elevate your pulse, which isn’t a concern for most healthy adults, though those with heart rhythm problems should use caution

By Anahad O'Connor Sept. 28, 2021

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My smartwatch shows me that my sleeping heart rate is much higher at night after I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine. It’s normally around 60 beats per minute, but it spikes up to 80 to 100 if I drink more than a glass of wine. Is that normal?

"We all know that a glass or two of wine can help you relax and unwind. But alcohol can also have pronounced effects on your cardiovascular system in the hours after you consume it, causing your heart to beat faster, at least in the short term. And in general, the more you drink, the greater the uptick in your heart rate.

Last year [2020], a group of researchers analyzed data from 32 different clinical trials of alcohol consumption involving 767 people; most were healthy young men in their 20s and 30s. They saw distinct patterns in how alcohol affected their heart rates and blood pressure readings shortly after drinking.

> In one study published in January, researchers recruited 26 men and women and had them spend three nights in a lab where they were monitored as they slept.

The researchers found that when people drank moderate amounts of wine, their nighttime heart rates rose by 4 percent compared with when they did not drink alcohol. But their heart rates returned to normal in the morning hours.

When people drank heavier amounts, however, their nighttime heart rates spiked 14 percent and remained elevated into the morning.

The study also found that alcohol, especially when consumed in higher amounts, temporarily lowered the participants’ heart rate variability, a measure of the variation in time between heartbeats. A higher variability is generally a sign of better cardiovascular fitness.

Alcohol also had distinct effects on blood pressure. A single drink had little effect on blood pressure, but when people consumed two drinks, they experienced a slight dip in their blood pressure levels in the hours that followed.

When they had more than two drinks, however, they saw their blood pressure levels fall at first and then begin to climb, eventually becoming slightly elevated about 13 hours after they drank. The findings on blood pressure seem to square with other studies that have shown that light drinking can be slightly beneficial to cardiovascular health, causing your blood vessels to dilate and blood pressure to fall, but that having more than two drinks on one occasion can stress your circulation.

It’s common for people to drink in the evening. So scientists have also looked at what happens when people consume alcohol before going to bed. . .

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Dr. Stefan Brunner, a cardiologist at the University Hospital of Munich and an author of the study, said his findings demonstrate that in general, heart rate climbs continuously with increasing blood alcohol levels, but not everyone shows the same level of susceptibility. “Some people react more profoundly with an increasing heart rate than others,” he said, though it’s unclear why that is. Some people may simply have a higher tolerance for alcohol, he said.

Dr. Brunner emphasized that for most healthy adults, an increase in heart rate in response to alcohol should not be alarming, especially if you are drinking in moderation, which the Dietary Guidelines for Americans defines as no more than one drink a day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. . .Dr. Brunner said, though he added that you should be concerned if you experience palpitations after drinking or if your smartwatch alerts you to an abnormal heart rhythm such as atrial fibrillation. . .

Dr. Peter Kistler, a cardiologist and expert on heart rhythm disorders, said that people with arrhythmias can drink alcohol, but that they should do so only occasionally, limiting themselves to just one standard drink no more than three or four times a week. Avoiding alcohol altogether, however, could make a big difference. Dr. Kistler’s research has shown that in people with recurrent arrhythmias who were regular drinkers, giving up alcohol cut their rate of events in half."

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/well/eat/alcohol-heart-rate-effects.html