Alcohol and the heart
Long-term excessive drinking increases your risk of developing problems with your heart.
Long-term heavy drinking can damage your heart, arteries or other blood vessels throughout your body. This damage is called cardiovascular disease (also known as CVD).1
Cardiovascular disease causes around a quarter of all deaths in the UK – more than 170,000 people every year.2 It’s one of the most important reasons not to drink more than the UK Chief Medical Officers' (CMOs) low risk drinking guidelines, to help to reduce your risk.
Long-term, heavy drinking can lead to heart disease
The UK Chief Medical Officers advise that to keep health risks from alcohol low, you should drink no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days with several drink-free days, and no bingeing.3
Regularly drinking more than the low risk drinking guidelines, increases your risk of developing heart disease.4
This is because drinking at this level can:
- Cause a sustained increase to your blood pressure.5 Sustained raised blood pressure is called hypertension and is one of the most important risk factors for having a heart attack or a stroke.6 High blood pressure can also be caused by weight gain from the calories in alcohol.7
- Heavy drinking may also weaken the heart muscle (known as ‘cardiomyopathy’), meaning your heart doesn’t pump blood as efficiently, which can cause fatal heart failure.8
What is heart disease?
There are many different types of heart disease. In the UK, the most common is coronary heart disease (CHD), which can cause a fatal major heart attack.9 The most commonly known symptom of coronary heart disease is known as ‘angina’ (or chest pain).
It can cause heart attacks which may be fatal and chronic heart failure which causes shortness of breath on mild exertion.10
CHD happens when there is a gradual build-up of fatty deposits on the walls of the arteries in your heart (the coronary arteries) which allow blood clots to form.11 These deposits cause the artery to narrow making it harder for it to supply the oxygen and nutrients from the blood to your heart muscle which needs these to function normally.12
What is a heart attack?
Someone has a heart attack when one or more of their coronary arteries become blocked, stopping blood supply to the heart’s muscles and starving it of oxygen. This means the heart can’t pump properly, and in severe cases it may stop beating altogether (a cardiac arrest) which even with immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may be fatal.13
What is heart failure?
Damage to the heart muscle can lead to heart failure – when your heart can no longer pump blood around your body efficiently.14 This leads to symptoms such as swelling of the ankles and shortness of breath which can affect you for the rest of your life and often become progressively worse.15
Binge drinking can make your heart beat irregularly
Sometimes known as ‘holiday heart syndrome’, binge drinking can make your heart beat irregularly (for example atrial fibrillation).16 It gets its name because cases are more common around holiday times or after the weekend, when people tend to drink more.17
The NHS defines binge drinking as ‘drinking heavily over a short space of time’.18 Sometimes a technical definition is used which says binge drinking is more than eight units of alcohol in a single session for men, or more than six units in a single session for women.19 That’s equivalent to about four pints of normal strength beer for a man or three pints for a woman.
Holiday heart syndrome tends to come on after episodes of heavy drinking – typically at least 15 units (about seven and a half pints of typical-strength beer, or one and a half bottles of wine) in a 24-hour period.20
The irregular heart beat caused by holiday heart syndrome will make you feel breathless, tired and affect your blood pressure.21 These factors together may make you feel quite unwell, increasing your immediate risk of a heart attack, stroke or sudden death.
Can alcohol have any benefits for your heart?
There is some limited evidence that low levels of alcohol consumption can be protective against coronary heart disease, but only in a specific section of the population – women over 50.22
Even for women over 50, the overall risks of harm from alcohol outweigh any small benefit.23 The evidence for the small benefit to heart health doesn’t justify drinking to protect your heart.
This protective effect is only seen with low levels of alcohol consumption (not more than one unit a day) and doesn’t appear to be dependent on the type of alcoholic drink – for example, there is no evidence that red wine offers extra protection.24
Anything above one unit a day causes the protective effect to disappear and there is instead an increased risk of coronary heart disease.25
Even low-level drinking can increase the risks of other very serious illnesses including pancreatitis and alcohol-related liver disease especially if other risk factors are present e.g. smoking and obesity. The safest level of drinking is to drink no alcohol at all.26,27
Protecting your heart
The good news is there are positive lifestyle changes you can make to protect your heart.
Cutting down on alcohol is one of the ways the British Heart Foundation (BHF) advises you can keep your heart healthy.28
In addition to drinking less, there are other effective ways to reduce your risk of developing heart disease. The BHF also advises that you should:30
- quit smoking
- manage your weight
- move more
- eat better
- manage stress
- get treatment for hypertension
If you do choose to drink alcohol, it’s safest for both men and women to drink no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days with several drink-free days, and no bingeing.29
Use our Unit and Calorie Calculator below to see how your drinks add up, or learn why alcohol makes stress harder to deal with.
Alcohol and stress
Support
For help or advice, contact the British Heart Foundation. Call their Heart Helpline on 0300 330 3322 or visit www.bhf.org.uk
Your GP can help you figure out if you should make any changes in your drinking, and offer help and advice along the way.
If you’re concerned about someone else's drinking, or your own, Drinkline runs a free, confidential helpline. Call 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9am – 8pm, weekends 11am – 4pm).
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References
[24] Global Burden of Disease Alcohol Collaborators. (2018). Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Lancet, 392(10152),1015-1035.
[27] Chiva-Blanch, G., & Badimon, L. (2019). Benefits and Risks of Moderate Alcohol Consumption on Cardiovascular Disease: Current Findings and Controversies. Nutrients, 12(1), 108.
Last Reviewed: 2nd September 2025
Next Review due: 2nd September 2028