Q: I am a 62-year-old man with a condition in my legs called intermittent claudication. I get severe aching and pain in both legs, especially the calves, when I walk a short distance. Sometimes I walk only a few yards before I have to stop and then the pain goes away only to return when I start walking again. My doctor is going to refer me to a surgeon for a bypass operation to provide more blood to the calves of my legs and I believe I will go ahead with it as I can’t go on like this.
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When the doctor asked if I was a drinker, I had to tell him that at one time (several years ago) I was, but since that time I have been “on the wagon” and now could be called a teetotaler – although it hasn’t helped my legs a bit. Now I hear that taking a small amount of alcohol daily – two drinks I think, might have prevented the problem in the first place. I guess I’m too late for that but I would like to hear your opinion on it.
A: You have described intermittent claudication very well. It translates into pain in the legs caused by reduced blood supply to the leg muscles as a result of narrowing and hardening of the arteries in the legs.
Here, as in angina, the leg muscles normally fed by the diseased arteries cry out in pain when they are required to work without sufficient fuel (blood) to nourish them. There is usually, however, sufficient blood to nourish the muscles at rest, hence no pain. This is why the claudication is termed intermittent.
In your case, the disorder has progressed too far for anything short of a bypass to relieve it. Having said this, I will now give my opinion on your second question – does taking two alcoholic drinks a day prevent or slow down the occurrence of a problem similar to yours?
According to a report in the American Heart Association Journal, Circulation, Feb. 4, 1997, “in men, one or two alcoholic drinks a day are associated with a one-third lower risk of arterial disease that squeezes blood flow to the legs.” This was the conclusion of scientists at the Harvard Medical School who conducted the study.
They and other research teams have shown a link between moderate alcohol consumption and lower risks of arterial disease in the brain and heart. This is the first study to document the same beneficial effect on leg arteries.
More is not better
But the early reports on the beneficial effects of alcohol in treating heart and brain disease had problems. Many patients prescribed the limited amount of alcohol assumed that if two drinks were good, then more were better, when in reality, larger amounts can have just the opposite effect – not to speak of smoking (a companion addiction) that remains “the most important independent predictor of circulation problems in the legs.”
A few months ago, the same scientists in Archives of Internal Medicine, Jan. 3, 1997, concluded that larger intakes of alcohol can harm more than help and warn against health-care providers “prescribing” two drinks a day without a thorough knowledge of their patient’s drinking and smoking history.
A drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, four ounces of wine or 11Ú2 ounces of 80-proof alcohol.
