adriana barton Globe and Mail Blog Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 8:34PM EDT

A drink a day could keep the cardiologist away.

Thats the upshot of a new study looking at the drinking habits of male heart attack survivors.

Researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston followed 1,800 men for 20 years. They found that compared with teetotallers, men who drank about two alcoholic beverages a day had a 42 per cent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular causes.

The effect was the same whether the men favoured beer, wine or whisky, ABC News reports. (Vodka and Red Bull? That might be a different story.) But too much booze is still a bad thing, researchers found. Heavy drinkers had a similar risk of death from any cause as abstainers.

The study is the first to look at mens alcohol consumption both before and after they survived a heart attack, said lead author Jennifer Pai, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Universitys medical school.

Our study indicates that for men already consuming moderate amounts of alcohol, continuing to consume moderate amounts after a heart attack may be beneficial for long-term survival, she told ABC News.

In their conclusion, Dr. Pai and colleagues said that alcohols protective effects may be strongest among men with less severe damage from heart attack, and added that further study was needed.

But the researchers didnt mention whether teetotallers in the study abstained from drinking because of other health problems, which might in part explain their higher mortality rates.

Experts caution non-drinkers against viewing the study as a reason to take up drinking after a hospital stay.

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Bottoms up for heart health?