MONDAY, March 11, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- For young women, there's a fine line between how many drinks can help their blood pressure and how many can hurt it.
That's what a new study of almost 71,000 young women in Boston found, in the first glimpse at the link between high blood pressure and alcohol consumption in women in their childbearing years. The report appears in today's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
"What is important about this study is that it shows that alcohol can begin having its effects on women even during the childbearing years, a time when many women believe they are immune to such problems," says Dr. Ravi Thadhani, study author and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
While women have been led to believe the protective effects of estrogen, plentiful during childbearing years, protects against factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, the new research shows this may not be the case.
"Our study showed a J-shaped curve, with light drinkers experiencing a decreased risk of hypertension, while heavier drinkers [were] having an increased risk," says Thadhani. All the women in the study were between the ages of 25 and 42 when the eight-year project began.
For hypertension expert Dr. Phyllis August, the study is important, but should only be seen as another piece in the puzzle.
"The increases in the blood pressure were not all that significant, and more importantly, there are many factors that could have been responsible for these changes that were not taken into consideration, including whether or not the women who had the lower blood pressure lived a healthier lifestyle overall," says August, head of the Division of Hypertension at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
She also points up the disadvantages of drawing conclusions based on data extracted from such a large study group, pointing to the mistakes that were made when the first Nurses Health Study revealed hormone replacement therapy cut the risks of heart disease -- a tenet that has since been hotly debated in scientific circles.
"My point is to proceed with caution, and not be so quick to draw any definitive conclusions about alcohol and hypertension in young women," August says.
Thadhani's study involved women from the massive Nurses Health Study II, a prospective look at 116,671 female nurses aged 25 to 42 that started in 1989 and is based at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The group was followed with regular questionnaires focusing on a variety of lifestyle factors and health outcomes, with more than a 90 percent response rate during every two-year follow-up.
Among the baseline questions answered by the women in 1989 was average intake of wine, beer and liquor. Answers were categorized as follows: none or less than one drink a month: one to three drinks a month; a drink per week; two to four drinks per week; five to six drinks per week; seven to 13 drinks per week; 14 to 24 drinks per week; 25 to 39 drinks per week; and 40 or more drinks per week.
The data was used to compute the average number of drinks per day, and to document what researchers called "episodic drinking."
"An example of episodic drinking would be consuming no alcohol for five days and reserving all alcohol intake for just one or two days," Thadhani says.
Ultimately, the study eliminated women who had been pregnant during the eight-year period, as well as those diagnosed with stroke, diabetes or heart disease. That left almost 71,000 women -- 4,188 of who developed hypertension.
To separate the impact of alcohol from other influencing factors, researchers took into account the effects of smoking, obesity, exercise, birth control pills, cholesterol levels and family history of hypertension.
The final analysis: Women who drank moderate amounts of alcohol -- two to three drinks per week -- had about a 15 percent decreased risk of developing hypertension when compared to non-drinkers. Women who drank more than 10 or 12 drinks a week experienced up to a 30 percent increased risk of developing hypertension.
However, women who engaged in episodic drinking did not share the increased risks with those who drank more regularly, even when the total alcohol intake was the same.
Thadhani theorizes the continued assault on the body created by regular drinking may be most responsible for increased risks of hypertension.
However, before you swap those nightly cocktails for a weekend spree, Thadhani cautions binge drinking increases other health risks, including stroke, cardiovascular disease and trauma.
What To Do
For more information on high blood pressure, visit The Hypertension Network.
To learn more about the effect of alcohol on women's health, check out The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
