wine and health

Drinking and depression have problematic relationship, so the consensus from recent studies that moderate red wine consumption correlates to lower odds of depression may seem hard to swallow. But it is clear that daily wine drinkers show a J-shaped curve for clinical depression: lower in moderation, higher in excess. Some very good data comes from a long term study called PREDIMED (“Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea” (Prevention with Mediterranean Diet)), which is a randomized, multicenter, controlled, clinical trial conducted in Spain involving more than 5500 subjects. At up to 7 years of follow-up, wine intake within the range of 2-7 drinks per week was significantly associated with lower risk of incident depression. Resveratrol, wine’s miracle molecule, offers a potential explanation though it is likely the whole story. There is an experimental model of depression in rats, allowing for measurement of depressive symptoms in response to various drug treatments (no model yet for the...