A night on the town is a right of passage for many young people. For many, nothing beats letting your hair down after a long week of work or studying and enjoying a few drinks and a dance with friends.
However, while we may get over the hangover, we probably aren’t quite aware of how regular drinking and binge drinking can affect our bodies and, importantly, our heart.
A report showed that British women are the biggest binge drinkers on the planet, and men aren’t too far behind, while there are more people than ever checking into rehab for alcohol dependency, while many more aren’t getting the help they need. So it’s important to understand how that is affecting health.
It turns out, it could be affecting your health quite a bit too. Here are five ways binge drinking will affect your heart’s health…
Irregular Heart Rhythms
One of the biggest and most immediate effects of binging is the disruption of the heart’s normal rhythm. This is known as ‘holiday heart syndrome’ and occurs when otherwise healthy people experience atrial fibrillation after a drinking session.
This is characterised by rapid, irregular beating of the heart, causing the likes of palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath and dizziness. This can be resolved after the alcohol has been metabolised, but persistent atrial fibrillation can lead to strokes and heart failure later in life.
Increased Blood Pressure
As a depressant and stimulant, alcohol will see your blood pressure fluctuate, and during episodes of binge drinking the body will respond with a sharp rise in blood pressure. It’s the heart working harder to circulate blood. Over time, this contributes to hypertension, a huge risk in developing heart disease.
High blood pressure damages the lining of blood vessels and quickens the build up of fatty deposits, both of which lead to the heart working harder than it should have to, heightening the risk of heart attacks, strokes and chronic heart failure.
Weakened Heart Muscle (Cardiomyopathy)
We all know the heart is a muscle, and like any muscle it can be damaged by stress. Heavy drinking over time weakens the muscular wall of the heart, which leads to alcoholic cardiomyopathy. That means the heart becomes enlarged and not as efficient at pumping blood around the body.
The symptoms can feel relatively subtle at first. You might feel fatigued or breathless, but they do often develop and severe heart failure can occur. What’s more, once the damage is done, it’s very difficult to reverse that.
Higher Risk of Blood Clots
Alcohol interferes with the body’s normal clotting mechanisms. During and after binge drinking, platelets (the cells responsible for clotting) become more prone to sticking together. This hypercoagulable state makes it more likely for clots to form in the arteries or veins. In the context of the heart, this is particularly dangerous: a clot can block blood flow to the coronary arteries, triggering a heart attack, or travel to the brain, causing a stroke. The combination of alcohol-induced arrhythmias and increased clotting makes for a potent and dangerous duo.
Increased Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death
Finally, the most sobering consequence of binge drinking is its link to sudden cardiac death. Excessive alcohol can destabilise the electrical signals that coordinate the heartbeat, leading to lethal arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation. This is most common in people who already have underlying heart disease, but it has also been reported in younger individuals with no prior diagnosis. The unpredictability of these events underscores the seriousness of binge drinking: a single heavy night out could, in rare cases, be fatal.
