Heart disease is a phrase that refers to various types of conditions that affect heart function. This includes coronary heart disease, valvular heart disease, heart rhythm disturbances, coronary artery disease and more.
Is red wine good for your heart?
Red wine contains antioxidants that might help to prevent coronary artery disease, a type of heart disease that leads to heart attacks.
However, as the British Heart Foundation site points out, fruits such as grapes, blueberries, and strawberries also contain antioxidants.
Plenty of healthy veggies such as kale, spinach, and artichokes are packed with antioxidants.
Swapping to a healthy diet full of fruits, vegetables, beans, and pulses is a better option than drinking red wine every day.
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In fact, drinking red wine can actually lead to heart disease rather than prevent it.
Alcohol, including red wine, is a depressant drug and slows down your brain’s control of your body.
It affects important functions such as speech and movement, and can slow your heart rate and breathing down to a dangerously low level.
Drinking too much alcohol on a regular basis can seriously damage your heart, so don’t use the antioxidant content of red wine as an excuse to binge drink!
The amount you should drink
If you drink most weeks, the NHS advises you to drink no more than a specific amount to keep health risks to a low level.
Both men and women are advised to drink no more than 14 units a week on a regular basis.
That’s about ten small glasses of low-strength wine, or six pints of average-strength peer.
If you’re trying to cut down, you should try to have several drink-free days a week.
The NHS also points out that there is no safe drinking level, and that’s why drinking less than 14 units a week is called “low risk” drinking rather than “safe” drinking.
Alcohol can not only cause heart disease, but it can also lead to cancers of the mouth, throat and breast, stroke, liver disease, brain damage, and damage to the nervous system.
The risks of drinking alcohol regularly outweigh any possible benefits you may have heard of.
The only group of people who might see some benefit overall in the UK is women over the age of 55.
However, there isn’t enough evidence to say this is definitely true and it only applies to low levels of drinking – around five units a week or less.
