Is beer a no no ?

[Jimmyk]

just wondering.
Right now, I'm interested in getting to know my new mechanical Aortic valve.
But somewhere in the future, would I be able to drink a couple of beers?
When I get back to work, I'm usually on the road ,and being a union electrician, there's a night that's picked out of the week called brotherhood night. Electricians would get together at a pub and have a couple of beers.
Is this something that I should stay away from?
Do any of the forum members drink?

this is all new to me, I'm just 2 weeks post surgery and don't plan on going back to work for at least 6 more weeks. First I'd like to get an ok to gradually start exercising in the gym.

Thanks,
Jimmy

 

[dick0236]

A couple beers won't be a problem. FWIW, I was prescribed a beer a nite while I was in the hospital post AVR surgery. It's a pretty good diuretic.

 

[LondonAndy]

In my experience, which has included some experiments of testing my INR before and after consumption of 2 pints of beer, moderate alcohol consumption (whether beer, wine, spirits or in trifle or Christmas Pudding) is not a problem. If there was an effect, it was to very modestly reduce my INR, by 0.1 units or so, but this is too small a difference to be confident of being down to the alcohol, being within the margin of error anyway. I regularly drink a glass of wine with a meal with no effect.

I did a similar test within a couple of months of my AVR surgery and that DID appear to show a significant difference in INR (a reduction of 0.9) and so I didn't drink at all for over a year. But after more threads discussing alcohol on this forum with almost unanimous agreement of negligible effect I tried my experiment again and have been drinking regularly, moderately, ever since. So I am not sure if alcohol might have more effect during the early days when INR can be a bit unstable, or whether (and more likely in my view) the early test result was down to another factor.

I find the biggest effects on my INR are:

• Having a cold (INR drop occurs before full symptoms show)
• Having loose bowel movements / upset stomach
• Missing a Warfarin dose

Otherwise I would agree with Dick that Warfarin has had no effect on my diet or lifestyle