Age Gets Better with Wine: 5 more reasons

45. A study in rats, who were given either red wine or alcohol in the same percentage to drink over 6 weeks, found several changes in their fat cells compared to those drinking only water. Both the red wine and alcohol groups gained less weight than the nondrinkers despite equivalent overall calorie consumption. The wine drinkers had smaller fat cells, which is a good thing.
46. A wine-derived compound called quercetin improved liver and pancreas function in diabetic rats. Although resveratrol has received a lot of attention as an anti-diabetes therapy, this study showed how other wine polyphenols help too.
47. A form of quercetin called Q3 was tested for anti-flu viral activity and found to be more potent that oseltamivir (Tamiflu) according to a recent study from Korea. This provides further support to findings that wine drinkers have fewer colds and flu.
48. A study from Brazil evaluated the effect of wine polyphenols on a type of brain cancer called glioma. They found that resveratrol and quercetin together had a synergistic effect on inhibiting cancer cell growth.
49. And to further the idea that resveratrol isn't the only good thing in wine, another study looked at the effects of quercetin on the inflammatory effects of exercise on muscle. This is an important study because it is one of the few clinical studies reported. They found that quercetin supplementation reduced inflammatory markers after 3 days of intense exercise in trained cyclists.

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Wear red and DRINK red for women’s heart health

This Friday Feb 2nd is the annual “wear red” day in Canada and the U.S. to raise awareness for women’s heart health. Why only a day for the number one threat to women’s health? Women are 5 times more likely to succumb to heart disease than breast cancer, which gets a whole month (October.) Another contradiction is that the advice women hear about prevention of breast cancer is the opposite of what you can do to lower the risk of heart disease: a daily glass of wine. Even one drink a day raises your risk of breast cancer, we are told, ignoring the overriding benefits of wine on heart health. Drink red wine to live longer Here’s why I think women should also “drink red.” For starters, wine helps de-stress and celebrates life. Stress is a factor in heart disease, and if that were the only way wine helped it would be worth considering. But the medical evidence is also strong: a daily glass of red wine helps raise the HDL “good cholesterol” levels, which lowers the risk of cardiovascular p…

How globalization of drinking habits threatens the French paradox

It seems that the more studies we see on the relationship between wine and health, and the larger they are, the more contradictory the results. Headlines summarizing comprehensive international studies declare the French paradox dead, and all alcoholic beverages are equally detrimental. I think there is an overlooked explanation for this: over the past several decades, convergence of drinking patterns around the world has separated wine from its role as a daily part of a meal. Globalization has commoditized our views about drink, toppling it from its role as a culturally specific emblem. Global convergence of drinking There are several recent reports summarizing the trend,[i],[ii],[iii]and it applies for both developed and developing countries. Since the early 1960s, wine’s share of global alcohol consumption has more than halved, declining from 35% to 15%. Beer and spirits have taken up the slack, with beer gaining 42% and spirits adding 43%, both large gains. The bigger story howeve…

Which types of wine are the healthiest?

I am often asked after lecturing on the healthful properties of wine which type is best to drink. Since much of the discussion has to do with the polyphenol antioxidants from the skins and seeds of the grape, red wine is the first criterion since it is fermented with the whole grape rather than the pressed juice. This allows for extraction and concentration of these compounds, familiar ones being resveratrol and tannins. But beyond that, which varietals have the highest concentrations?

According to the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, “The best kind of wine is that which is pleasant to him that drinks it” but modern science expects more specifics. (The point of course is that if you have a wine that you enjoy you are more likely to drink regularly and therefore reap the benefits.) But there are several difficulties in singling out certain wines for their healthful properties. Which compounds to measure? Are we talking about heart health or the whole gamut? Is it the varietal of the …

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