Skip to main content

More wine on the brain: healthy reason #93 to drink wine

93. We continue to hear about all of the ways by which wine might be good for the brain: activating memory and learning enzymes, untangling the plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, and so on. But some have cautiously pointed out that the polyphenols that mediate these effects might not actually get into the brain tissue. Our central circuitry is protected by what is called the "blood-brain barrier" so that toxic molecules can't wander in at will. This of course also creates difficulties in getting medications and helpful nutrients across. Indeed, studies have shown that after oral ingestion, wine polyphenols might not get in to any great degree, suggesting that what we see in a test tube might not be happening inside the brain.
But recent findings from Purdue University show that with regular daily consumption, levels do begin to accumulate in about a week to 10 days. So all of the things we have been saying about regular moderate consumption find more support here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting resveratrol: new findings rekindle anti-aging debate

Just when we thought the bloom was off the rosé for resveratrol, the anti-oxidant polyphenol from red wine with multiple anti-aging properties, along comes new research giving life to the debate. But first a bit of background: As I detailed in my book Age Gets Better with Wine , it is well-documented that wine drinkers live longer and have lower rates of many diseases of aging. Much or the credit for this has been given to resveratrol, though there isn’t nearly enough of it in wine to explain the effects. Nevertheless, I dubbed it the “miracle molecule” and when it was reported to activate a unique life-extension phenomenon via a genetic trigger called SIRT, an industry was born, led by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, quickly acquired by pharma giant Glaxo. The hope was that resveratrol science could lead to compounds enabling people to live up to 150 years and with a good quality of life. But alas, researchers from other labs could not duplicate the results, and clinical studies disa...

Is wine a functional food?

Then again, didn’t all foods used to be functional? In the modern era of bulging waistlines, it would seem that nutrition has taken a back seat to processed foods engineered to tweak our taste buds and pleasure centers in the brain. And it is all too easy – and wrong – to cast wine as merely empty calories. But can we really consider wine to be a food, especially a nutritious one? To begin with, the term “functional food” means that it contains specific nutrients with identifiable health benefits. Sometimes these are added in, as with vitamins A and D in milk or calcium in orange juice. The way I see it, in a well-balanced diet there shouldn’t be a need for such enhancements. Wine for example naturally contains an abundance of antioxidant polyphenols, nutritionally vital ingredients that are increasingly lacking in many foods. A glass of wine with dinner on a daily basis is associated with longer life and better health by a variety of measures, a claim difficult to prove with vita...