United States: A recent study cautions that alcohol consumption may endanger the heart health of a sleeping airline passenger, especially on long-haul trips.
Even in young, healthy people, alcohol combined with cabin pressure at cruising altitude causes a prolonged rise in heart rate and decreases in blood oxygenation, according to study.
Data Analysis
According to the data, these impacts may be more pronounced in older passengers or those with chronic health issues the more alcohol they consume.
According to background notes from researchers, blood oxygen levels in healthy passengers can drop to about 90% while traveling at altitude. Hypobaric hypoxia, or low blood oxygen levels at high altitude, is defined as anything below that.
Research Insights
Researchers found that during sleep, alcohol causes heart rate to rise and blood vessel walls to relax, producing a comparable impact to hypobaric hypoxia. This led them to believe that the mixture would hurt passengers who were asleep on airplanes.
The 48 participants in the study ranged in age from 18 to 40. Half were placed in an altitude chamber that replicated cabin pressure at cruising altitude, and the other half were allocated to a sleep lab operating under standard air pressure.
Of them, half were required to consume a quantity of vodka roughly equivalent to two glasses of wine or two cans of beer.
Alcohol and cabin pressure together resulted in a drop in blood oxygen levels to just over 85% and an increase in heart rate to an average of 88 beats per minute while you slept. results shows.
In contrast, the blood oxygen saturation and heart rate of the alcohol-free group in the altitude chamber were just over 88% and 73 beats per minute, respectively.
Dealing Issues
In the meanwhile, blood oxygen levels in the sleep lab were slightly under 95% and heart rates were slightly under 77 beats per minute for those who drank alcohol, and just under 96% and slightly under 64 beats per minute for those who did not.
Under cabin pressure and alcohol consumption, oxygen levels below the recommended level persisted for 201 minutes, while they did not for 173 minutes when alcohol was not consumed.
Call to action
The team, headed by senior researcher Eva-Maria Elmhorst, deputy head of sleep research at the German Institute of Aerospace Medicine at Aachen University, concluded, “Together these results indicate that, even in young and healthy individuals, the combination of alcohol intake with sleeping under hypobaric conditions poses a considerable strain on the cardiac system and might lead to exacerbation of symptoms in patients with cardiac or pulmonary diseases.”
The authors further stated, “It may be helpful to consider changing regulations to restrict the access to alcoholic beverages on board aeroplanes. Practitioners, passengers, and crew should be informed about the potential risks.”