For Your Health: Wine!

It’s resolution time, and no doubt many revolve around eating better, exercising more and maybe even – GASP – drinking less. Leave it to the wine seller to say that’s a horrible resolution, right, but hey, when science is mostly on your side… Since the late ‘80’s, researchers have been validating the cardiovascular benefits of moderate drinking, not to mention some other health claims that have varying amounts of scientific support. So, here’s a bit of the skinny (pun intended) on some of the latest wine and health research.

From the heart, for the heart
Since 1991 when 60 Minutes’ Morley Safer first reported on the “French paradox,” Americans and others have been fascinated by the way the French seem to resist heart disease despite their culturally-entrenched diet of high-fat stinky cheeses, cholesterol-laden pâtés, and pommes frites bathed in saturated fats like lard. Are butter and cream like vitamins in this culture? Nay, many believe that the wine they drink with their meals offers cardio-protection.

Moderate alcohol consumption is known to raise “good” cholesterol levels and flush out the nasty platelets that like to cling to our blood vessels and create the blockages that can lead to heart attacks and strokes. Additionally, the antioxidants in wine – whether they are flavonoids or nonflavonoids aid heart health. The superstar nonflavonoid is undoubtedly resveratrol, which also prevents fat from clogging our arteries. Additionally, quercetin and catechins are popular antioxidants found in wine and other foods. The reason so many people tout the benefits of red wine is that these antioxidants are primarily found in grape skins, which steep longer in the red winemaking process than white wines, so reds have more resveratrol than whites. However, antioxidants are everywhere, including non-alcoholic foods, like simple, unfermented grapes. Wine, however, has an interestingly larger amount.

Antioxidants prevent cancer, right?
When I think antioxidants, I think anti-cancer. Antioxidants fight the free radicals in our bodies that are said to result from smoking, radiation and certain bad chemicals that have been associated with cancers and other diseases. That’s why marketers love to promote antioxidants. If folks have seen the movie, Idiocracy, my husband compares this worldwide obsession with antioxidants to the movie’s fixation with electrolytes that caused society to replace water with sports drinks and wonder why the grass and plants were all dying. Seriously though, many researchers have long reported wine’s antioxidant properties and their role in preventing cancer.

That’s why many health-minded wine lovers were disappointed to hear the studies this past year that reported an increased risk of certain cancers as a result of even moderate wine consumption. And these weren’t small studies, either. Some researchers believe that alcohol damages fragile cells it comes into contact with, increasing the risk for mouth, lung, bladder, colon and liver cancers. Additionally, a large study involving British women showed consistent increased risk for breast cancer. However, the jury is still out on these issues as researchers wrestle with some of the confounding factors of these studies, such as the roles diet and other lifestyle factors played in increasing cancer risks. Undoubtedly, this confounding scientific evidence will spawn further research.

Super Wine!
Reading the various medical literature on wine might lead one to believe that wine cures most anything, and in some cases the studies, though mostly in animals, do seem promising. Wine has impressive antioxidants, and antioxidants are credited with not only preventing heart attacks, strokes and blood vessel disease, but also thwarting Alzheimer’s disease, other dementia, degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s, immune disorders, cataracts and macular degeneration. Of course, successes are in varying amounts, but according to Dr. Harvey E. Finkel, a clinical professor of medicine at Boston University Medical Center and chairman of the Committee on Health of the Society of Wine Educators, these claims have solid research behind them, so the outlook is good that antioxidants are likely helpful to people with these health issues.

More preliminary research, according to Dr. Finkel, has shown that wine and grapes inactivated certain viruses and possibly stimulated “fat burning” that helped with weight loss, believe it or not. But my favorite study is the one that essentially says wine makes you smarter. A study of aging twins – one who drank moderately, the other who didn’t – showed that the moderate drinker was smarter, scoring higher intellectually than those who drank significantly more or significantly less.

Everything in moderation
Without exception, studies that purported wine and/or alcohol’s health benefits only saw those benefits with moderate consumption, which is defined as one drink per day for women and two per day for men, who are generally larger and metabolize alcohol somewhat differently. As soon as consumption increased beyond this level, the benefits disappeared and other long-term health risks developed, such as diabetes, liver disease and certain cancers.

That said, if we go back to that original researcher who discussed the French paradox with 60 Minutes, Serge Renaud, we see his research makes a wonderful case for enjoying moderate wine consumption. He and his colleagues from the University of Bordeaux associated moderate wine consumption with a “30% reduction in the death rate from all causes; a 35% percent reduction in death rates from cardiovascular disease; and an 18-24% reduction in death rates from cancer.” Now that is something I can drink to.