As stated before, I'm not a big fan of drinking after stroke. I found some interesting statements here about the issue:
The effects of alcohol may put you at further risk after a stroke, and you will need to review your drinking and consider cutting down, especially if you were a heavy drinker beforehand.There are a number of factors you need to consider – talk to your GP for more advice:
- Following a stroke you may be more vulnerable to alcohol and its negative effects such as sleep disturbance, poor balance and impaired speech.
- Alcohol may worsen mood swings and depression, which are common after a stroke. It may affect your memory and thinking, making you forgetful and less able to make sound judgements.
- If you are out after dark, you should remember that alcohol can reduce night vision by 25 per cent and slow down reaction times by 10-30 per cent.
- Alcohol acts on the kidneys, creating excessive amounts of urine, which may make you dehydrated. If you are suffering from headaches, the dehydrating effect of alcohol is likely to make them worse.
- Alcoholic drinks are high in calories that have no nutritional value. If you are less active than before your stroke, you will need to reduce your calorie intake (especially these ‘empty’ calories) to avoid becoming overweight. Alcohol may make it harder for your body to absorb essential nutrients such as vitamin B1 and calcium. If you are less active and not absorbing calcium properly, your bones may become weakened.
- Drinking alcohol may be harmful when taking medicines that are sometimes needed after a stroke. Ask your GP or pharmacist about whether you may drink at all and if so, what the sensible limits are for you. You may be advised to stop drinking for the first month or two after starting a new medicine so that your body can get used to its effects.
- If you are taking blood-thinning medications such as warfarin, it may be important to establish a routine of what you eat and drink. If you do drink you should ask at your anticoagulant clinic about your alcohol intake and how much you can safely drink on a regular basis.
4 comments:
I'm sure this will never get to be a true prescription but the BBC had a news report -A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as a low dose aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks. Flavinoids, you know. Then the news reports on CBS and Fox;Can alcohol make men smarter?
Or if you are into wine;
Cardiac Benefits of Red Wine Not From the Alcohol -Explain that a small Spanish open-label, crossover study found that consumption of a moderate amount of dealcoholized red wine over a 4-week period, but not red wine itself or gin, was associated with a modest decrease in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
Even so I do not drink very much.
Dean
Hi Dean!
I just think for the average stroke survivor is probably not a great idea to ingest something that effects balance, blood viscosity, reflexes, etc. Just throw it back to the doc. That's why they get paid big bucks.
My doctor said, "no drinking at all for one year after stroke." They said it could impair recovery. Now almost 2years out I still rarely drink. It makes me feel sick most of the time. I don't think my brain appreciates it. ;)
I asked my neurosurgeon a few weeks after my brain haemorrhage what my brain likes, if I could give it a treat. And he said there was nothing a brain is really fond of, but there was something it doesn't like and that was/is alcohol. Making new connections in the brain appears to be harder with alcohol present. So I haven't been drinking for almost 4 years now. I expect to get very tired when I would drink alcohol, no fun at all. So I avoid it.
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