Moderate drinking is good for one’s health. How good depends on your genetic constitution, at least that is what researchers from Boston say. If you dispose of the correct form of alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that breaks down the alcohol in your body, then you are better protected against a heart attack.

The speed at which the body metabolizes ethanol (the alcohol in beer, wine and spirits) is genetically influenced, according to Lisa Hines and her colleagues of the Harvard School of Public Health. They discovered that people who break down ethanol slowly because of a certain genetic predestination, enjoy most the positive aspects of a moderate alcohol consumption, compared to people that digest alcohol more quickly.
Epidemiological investigation has been showing for a long time already that light to moderate drinking reduces the risk of having a heart attack. Likewise there has always been discussion whether or not this health advantage was really caused by the consumption of alcohol or by a different aspects of one’s lifestyle that distinguishes moderate drinkers from others. The research of Hines confirms that it is the alcohol itself that is responsible for this favourable effect on one’s health.

Men and women

There are two types of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase 3, which is responsible for the metabolization of the breaking down of alcohol : one type breaks down ethanol quickly and the other one breaks down ethanol slower. Hines has performed some research on 396 persons that have had a light heart attack and tried to establish what kind of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase they had in their body. She compared these data with the alcohol dehydrogenase of 770 healthy volunteers. Furthermore she evaluated in both groups the consumption of alcohol. Her conclusion was the following : men with a slow type of the enzyme that drink moderately are best protected against a heart attack. Their risk of having a heart attack are 86% lower in comparison with men that have inherited the fast type of the enzyme and have less than one drink per week. A similar inquiry among women confirms that this genetic influence also applies to women.

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