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Can you drink if you have heart disease? Moderate drinking should be OK, if your doctor approves, but you shouldn’t count on alcohol to be a major part of your heart health plan.

“If you don’t drink alcohol now, there is no reason to start,” says Mark Urman, MD, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.

It’s true that there have been studies linking drinking small amounts of alcohol — no more than two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women — to better heart health.

But the exact link isn’t clear. Those studies don’t prove that the alcohol (whether it was wine, beer, or liquor) was the only thing that mattered.

Other lifestyle habits could have been involved, the American Heart Association notes. Or the important thing could have been nutrients that are in grapes, which you can get from the grapes themselves, without drinking wine.

“One drink a day is probably healthy for people with heart disease and those without it,” says James Beckerman, MD, a cardiologist at Providence St. Vincent Heart Clinic Cardiology in Portland, OR.

But whether or not you drink, you also need to keep the rest of your diet healthy, not smoke, and get regular exercise. Read More.