Alcohol and heart disease so this is sort of bad news for those of us who like to have a glass of
wine with dinner and that's a lot of us drinking in moderation might prevent heart attacks
probably does there's randomized double-blinded clinical studies of 100 heart patients though
that just added a new perspective about alcohol and heart disease those of you who have listened
a lot to this channel may be aware this has got to do with atrial fib the most common dysrhythmia
among middle agers and among other folks in fact like insulin resistance probably at least 90%
of atrial fib is not recognized why because it's paroxysmal meaning it comes on it happens and then
it goes away but that in and of itself can create risk five to eight times the risk for stroke so
here's where the study was this was published by the way this most recent study was published on
January 27th this year but this is not the first study showing this it's a randomized double-blind
placebo-controlled trials this time they used an interesting thing this was not a history
do you drink alcohol this was actually using intravenous alcohol to assess changes in atrial in
the electrophysiology of the atria UC San Francisco researchers found that alcohol has an
immediate effect on the hearts of afib patients the study was published in JACC the Journal of
the American College of Cardiology the Clinical Electrophysiology group in patients infused with
alcohol and maintained at a lower level of legal intoxication so it's not just huge amounts it's
amounts that people reach pretty often electrical properties of their hearts changed immediately as
compared to subjects in the placebo group alcohol infusion resulted in an average reduction of 12
milliseconds now what does that mean increased risk for atrial fib that's what that means
according to the senior study author Dr. Gregory Marcus the acute impact of exposure to alcohol
is a reduction in the time needed for certain heart muscle cells in the left atrium to recover
after being electrically activated and to be ready to be activated again particularly in the
pulmonary veins that empty into the left atrium that's also very important that location because
most atrial fibrillation occurs in that area of the atria where those pulmonary veins come back
so when you get this problem and you talk to cardiologists especially if you talk to an
invasive cardiologist who does a lot of ablation that's where they ablate it right there at the
pulmonary veins where they enter because that's where most of this re-entry problem occurs it's
called re-entry in other words the electrical impulse goes out but it can re-enter very quickly
that is the problem because it creates a cycle which goes into more of that chaos
atrial fib in atrial fib the orderly pumping of blood through the atria the heart's upper chambers
is disrupted according to the CDC the number of people in the US with atrial fib is approaching
12 million I will tell you though that's sort of like the CDC's statements about prediabetes
yes there's a whole lot of it yes they know that most of it's undiagnosed but their numbers
are overly conservative it's more than that atrial fib leads to 454,000 hospitalizations
yearly and it contributes to about 158,000 US deaths each year again
it's a major cause of stroke we used to think that most strokes were what we call idiopathic idio
meaning we don't know what causes it and pathic means cause so we don't know what causes it
the more we look at this issue the more that we find that what was the number one cause of strokes
in the past idiopathic is actually paroxysmal atrial fibrillation so this is a serious issue
if you've ever noticed your heart thumping and then it goes away I'd get that checked
out we've got several videos on it I diagnosed my own for example using an iKardia it's a
little device it's an electrical device which you can get on Amazon for about a hundred bucks
but if you go down that route if you find that you have it think two or three times before you
agree to have an ablation you know it's just like this thing about supplements and stents and bypass
you can't out medicate a lifestyle issue which is part of what we're going to be talking about here
ablation is not a replacement for better sleep decreased blood pressure and a little bit of
weight loss in fact my own atrial fib increases significantly once I get over 160 pounds
so I'd like to talk with you a minute about the webinar people don't understand what the webinar
is it's actually a great way to get some access to health care that you're just not going to
get any other way you actually get the lab tests yourself for at a local lab a Quest lab near you
for the inflammation panel and the OGTT and the insulin survey these are things inflammation and
prediabetes that your doctor just does not know about and here's the thing Harvard Health and many
others have said look sudden death is not always so sudden the Hollywood picture that it's a bolt
out of the blue is not realistic it's more like real lightning preceded by clouds wind and rain
stop that metabolic storm before the lightning strikes and here's where that metabolic storm
comes from it's inflammation and it has to do usually with prediabetes so again we actually
get labs we go over them in the webinar and then you can start finding out how you can
prevent that heart attack others said that you couldn't even predict we can show you how thanks