Do you find juggling family life, a home and work stressful? If you do, chances are a glass or two of wine at the end of the day is your lifesaver. Recently, there have been several new studies that confirm that second glass of wine a day may actually pose a risk to your life.

Wine is now a part of our social fabric, and by the end of a week it’s only too easy to have wracked up ten to fourteen glasses of the delicious liquid ambrosia without even noticing.

There’s a general misconception that when your alcohol comes in the form of red wine it's good for your heart and cardiovascular system. While it’s true that red wine is full of powerful antioxidants (called phenols), it's also full of alcohol...and that’s the problem.

In February the results of a huge University of Oxford survey involving 1.3 million British women showed that even moderate alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast, rectal and liver cancers. It makes no difference what type of alcohol is consumed. For women who smoke as well as drink, the risk of oesophageal and oral cancers also increases.

The link between alcohol and breast cancer has been well substantiated for some time now. In 2004, a review study looked at all the research on the subject of alcohol and breast cancer from around the globe. They found consistent evidence that breast cancer risk is higher amongst women consuming three or more drinks daily than abstainers, and as few as one drink daily starts to increase risk for both pre- and post-menopausal women.

You may be wondering how alcohol can increase breast cancer risk? There are two  theories here. Alcohol increases the level of oestrogen in the bloodstream, especially in post-menopausal women who generally have low oestrogen levels. If alcohol is consumed regularly, it adds up to a consistently greater exposure of breast cells to oestrogen. Around seven out of 10 breast cancers are oestrogen positive and stimulated by oestrogen.

The other theory involves the B vitamin folate. Drinking alcohol increases the urinary excretion of this nutrient, and women with low folate levels are at increased risk of breast cancer.

It's not only our breasts that are vulnerable to the negative effects of alcohol. The female heart is also especially sensitive to alcohol. Drinking more than two alcoholic drinks a day increases a woman's risk of the most common type of heart rhythm disturbance (atrial fibrillation) by a massive 60 per cent.

This condition causes the two upper chambers of the heart to beat quickly and irregularly. This means that blood pools in the heart chamber and becomes much more prone to clotting...and thus strokes.

It's long been known that excessive drinking contributes to hardening of the arteries, but it wasn't until 2008 that researchers proved that in women the effects of heavy drinking are often different to those seen in men. A woman who drinks 14 or more units of alcohol a week (a unit being the equivalent of a 5 oz glass of wine) faces a significantly increased risk of heart enlargement, which then increases risk of heart attacks and stroke by a massive 500 to 600 per cent. Once the heart is enlarged (a sign that it is overtaxed) it is very difficult to reverse the damage.

Am I saying we should all become tee-totalers? No, that's not the message. When it comes to alcohol and womens health, less is definitely more. As little as one glass of alcohol a day increases the risk of several cancers. Bump intake up to two or more glasses a day and you run a real risk of irreversible heart damage. It somehow makes a glass of sparking mineral water with a twist of lemon seem a whole lot more attractive doesn't it?

Lynda Wharton is a health and wellbeing writer, columnist and author. She also practises as an acupuncturist and naturopath.

lynda@lyndawharton.com

www.lyndawharton.com