The topic of sudden cardiac death is one that’s very close to me, having experienced an event many years back and earning me an implanted defibrillator.  So it should be no surprise that this topic piqued my interest when I stumbled across it.  Sudden Cardiac Death is the onset of an abrupt death, most often caused by a lethal cardiac arrhythmia.

The research, conducted by a team at the Boston Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and led by Stephanie Chiuve, an instructor in medicine, discovered that when women consumed between one-half to one drink of alcohol a day, their risk of sudden cardiac death dropped by 36 percent.  However, when women doubled their intake and had more than two drinks per day, they increased their risk of sudden cardiac death by about 15 percent.  The complete study is published in the October issue of the medical journal Heart Rhythm.

"Numerous studies have found a protective association between alcohol intake and coronary heart disease, stroke and congestive heart failure, but little research has been done on alcohol and sudden cardiac death," explained study author Stephanie Chiuve, an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.  She went on to state that alcohol has a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels and helps reduce the amount of plaque that collects in the blood vessels. She said that it doesn't appear that any one particular type of alcohol is more beneficial than others, suggesting that it's the ethanol contained in alcoholic beverages that provides the health boost.