A new study found that men with high blood pressure can have one or two drinks a day without increasing risk for heart attack or stroke. It is known that moderate consumption of alcohol lowers risk of heart disease.
But, since alcohol can increase blood pressure, would the same be true for men who have high blood pressure, itself a risk factor for heart disease? The prospective cohort study of nearly 12,000 men with hypertension found that men who drank moderately had reduced risk of heart attacks. Moderate alcohol consumption is defined as one to two drinks a day. A glass of beer, a glass of wine or a shot of liquor count as one drink.
An accompanying editorial discusses measurement error in nutritional epidemiology studies. Current limitations of procedures and reference instruments mean that “we cannot assume that corrected estimates of diet-disease associations in any single study are definitive.”