Wear red and DRINK red for women’s heart health

This Friday Feb 2^nd 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 problems. You may have heard that the “French paradox” was a myth, but it is alive and well: women who have a glass of wine daily with meals live longer on average than those who don’t.

A glass of wine is a simple thing with a powerful effect, particularly for peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women. According to women’s health expert Dr. Jennifer Wider, quoted in a recent article in the Wine Spectator, estrogen suppresses production of the enzyme (ADH) that metabolizes alcohol; as estrogen levels decline, ADH increases, so women handle alcohol more like men. Estrogen is protective against heart disease, so the benefits of red wine help maintain the protection later in life.

The alcohol-cancer dilemma: Why wine is still OK

The downside of a daily drink is the association of alcohol with some types of cancer. Recent studies conclude that any level of consumption raises risk, and breast cancer is second after lung cancer for women. But here’s the good news: if you stick to red wine, and limit bingeing, you are certainly within a low risk category and might actually be reducing your odds of breast cancer. Maybe it’s the antioxidants like resveratrol, maybe it’s wine’s association with healthy living, or both. Either way, remember it is the overall benefit to health and longevity that matters most.

So wear red, drink red, and share it with a friend.

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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...

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