wine and health

While the bloom may be off the rose for resveratrol as a miracle anti-aging molecule, there’s more to the story. Spin-offs of this wine-derived compound have recently been shown to reverse some fundamental changes in cellular aging in ways that the parent compound doesn’t. Resveratrol came to be a sort of celebrity molecule when it was demonstrated to activate genetic “switches” called sirtuins, which mediate the lifespan-extending effects of caloric restriction. But in the end it turned out that resveratrol is not a direct sirtuin activator, and experiments in animals other than primitive organisms failed to consistently replicate the effect. Resveratrol levels in wine and other dietary sources are too low to explain wine’s association with longevity anyway; secondly, when taken as a supplement it is rapidly metabolized into other compounds. But the concept of activating anti-aging genes opened new avenues of research, and new possibilities began to take shape. How splicing fac...

Because physical fitness and good health go hand in hand, muscle mass and strength are markers of resistance to frailty with aging. There are important behavioral associations such as regular exercise (no surprise there) and moderate regular consumption of alcohol, especially wine (only a surprise if you haven’t been reading this blog!) Studies on the subject are numerous and from many countries, suggesting that more than cultural factors are involved. A great example is this study [1] from Spain, which prospectively evaluated more than 2000 community-dwelling adults aged 60 and older at enrolment. The researchers were specifically interested in the Mediterranean drinking pattern, defined as moderate alcohol intake, with ≥80% of alcohol intake from wine, and drinking only with meals.  The subjects were followed regularly, with measures of muscle mass, walking speed, and endurance, and other factors. Using validated criteria, the subjects were classified as “frail” if they ha...

In order to make sense of the seemingly conflicting reports about wine and health there’s one essential thing to understand: the J-shaped curve. It’s a simple concept, universal, in plain sight, and often ignored. It goes like this: Take “nondrinking” as the baseline and plot increased or decreased relative risk of a health issue with increasing levels of daily consumption. Nondrinkers have a certain risk of, say heart attacks, moderate drinkers a lower risk, heavy drinkers a relatively higher risk. Not too complicated. The tricky parts are separating wine drinkers from drinkers in general, and daily moderate drinkers from occasional drinkers. The J-curve is not just about wine The J-shaped curve is too universal to ignore once you see it. Even dietary salt intake has a J-curve; consuming too little in your diet can be as harmful as too much. For years, the American Heart Association has endorsed a 1.5 gram per day limit on sodium intake (salt is about 40% sodium), about what ...

Why are wine’s maximal health benefits related to consuming it with meals? It’s well known that wine with dinner on a regular basis is best, and understanding the role of wine as a food can help illuminate wine’s larger role in health. A central puzzle about wine and health is how much is due to biochemical substances such as resveratrol.  On the other hand, to what degree wine drinkers do other healthy things that can either compensate for the detrimental effects or amplify the good ones? People who regularly have a glass of wine with dinner more often eat in moderation, prefer healthier foods, and deal better with stress. Wine with meals is associated with other healthy habits A few recent studies bring clarification to the issue. One from the University of Helsinki in Finland reported the results of a long term population study evaluating drinking patterns and subjective well-being. Although a comparatively small percent of Finns have wine with dinner on a regular basis, th...

  November 17 2016 will mark twenty-five years since the CBS television show  60 Minutes christenedthe term “French paradox” and ushered in the modern era of research on wine and health. It was a provocative idea at the time, attributing the French custom of regular imbibing to health and well-being. It still has its naysayers; as recently as 2015, England’s chief medical officer Sally Davies scorned the idea and proclaimed it an “old wives’ tale.” (She suggested a cup of tea instead, presumably with pinky finger raised.) Then there are those who reduce the idea to a simple question of nutritional biochemistry and proclaim that all of wine’s health benefits can be put into a pill, conveniently and properly skipping the alcohol. Is there still a useful truth underlying the paradox? Why the French Paradox is still true As with many questions in the realm of lifestyle and health, the answers are often nuanced and conditional. Government authorities in both America and Europ...

Actually neither beer nor wine was the first fermented beverage, and wine arguably has a closer connection to health, but recent evidence indicates that humans developed the ability to metabolize alcohol long before we were even human. The uniquely human ability to handle alcohol comes from the digestive enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH4. A new science called paleogenetics identifies the emergence of the modern version of the ADH4 gene in our ape ancestors some 10 million years ago. Interestingly, this corresponds to the time when our arboreal forebears transitioned to a nomadic lifestyle on the ground. We went from swinging from tree limbs to walking upright, and the rest is history. Understanding the circumstances that led to perpetuation of the ADH4 mutation may contain clues to what made us human in the first place. How the ability to metabolize alcohol made us human Paleogenetecist Matthew Carrigan has an idea about how this happened . Arboreal species rely on fruit tha...

The UK’s Royal Society for Public Health recently issued a warning that “the insidious increase in the size of wine glasses in bars and restaurants in the past decade” has led many of us to have “unwittingly increased the number of invisible calories we consume in alcohol.” They called for food labeling laws to include calorie content in alcoholic beverages, which are exempt. Writing in the British Medical Journal , RSPH chair Professor Fiona Sim cites a survey which found that 80% of adults did not know the calorie content of their drinks, and speculates that in addition to gargantuan glasses, this may be contributing to the obesity epidemic in the UK. According to the Professor, the average portion served is a whopping 250 ml. (8 ½ ounces!) If that’s true I can’t wait for my trip to the UK this October.  While public health officials are right to be concerned with rising obesity rates and abuse of alcohol, in this case they have missed the mark. For one thing, if larger glasse...

The promise of hangover-free wine has been in the news this week, based on new gene splicing techniques to manipulate the yeast used in fermentation. Using an enzyme called a “genome knife” researchers have been able to remove redundant copies of certain genes that produce compounds associated with hangovers, and what’s more, add in copies of genes that code for resveratrol.  All of this assumes of course that you don’t mind genetically modified yeast in your wine, and that these compounds are the main culprit in wine hangovers. To the second point, there is a long tradition of wine consumption in moderation with food. This in turn leads to slower consumption, less intoxication, and less propensity for hangovers. The real issue is compounds called biogenic amines which are associated with headaches and allergic –type symptoms. (Histamine is a biogenic amine for example, which is why you take anti-histamines for allergies.) Biogenic amines typically develop in wine during malol...

Headline August 8, 2013: Red wine protects from colon cancer “ According to a study … from researchers at SUNY Stony Brook which compared the drinking habits of red and white wine drinkers with similar lifestyles … consuming three or more glasses of red wine a week may help to reduce the risk of colon cancer. They found that drinking red wine reduced the risk of colon cancer by 68 per cent while drinking white wine did not. The researchers believe it is the resveratrol in red wine that provides the protection.” Headline August 10, 2013: Dietary supplement resveratrol is unlikely to have impact on cancer “… researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA, report results from a study of resveratrol in healthy human volunteers. They found that oral resveratrol is actually broken down to an inactive form very rapidly, so it’s unlikely that supplements have any effect.” Is it possible that both of these findings are true? The answer is yes, but only if it is somethi...

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...

Lance Armstrong’s doping revelation aside, a recent study added controversy to the question of whether quercetin, a red wine-derived substance, can boost athletic performance by boosting testosterone levels. Though it was a test-tube study not backed up by any human subject data, the researchers thought it significant enough to inform the World Anti-Doping Agency. Quercetin has been reported in reputable publications to enhance oxygen uptake and endurance, and since many of these have come out since my review in "Age Gets Better with Wine," so I thought it might be worth another look. For starters, quercetin is an antioxidant bioflavanoid that can be found in foods other than wine (apples for instance.) It first caught researchers’ attention as a component of red wine, being a possible contributor (along with other compounds such as resveratrol) to the famous “French paradox.” Like other wine-derived compounds, quercetin seems to alter energy metabolism at a cellular ...

Quote: “ A new study is hinting women may want to think twice before picking up a glass and toasting to their health. Health Magazine is reporting that researchers from Washington University School of Medicine have discovered that healthy middle-aged women do not benefit from taking resveratrol supplements.” (from Fox News) Am I the only one who sees that those two sentences do not make sense? What the study showed is that taking a particular supplement does no good, not that drinking red wine is bad. Seems pretty simple to me but it points out a common misconception that needs to be dispelled (again). The thinking goes like this: We know from a multitude of studies that red wine consumption in moderation is linked to a long list of health benefits. These include lower rates of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes, to name just a few. But alcohol is of course bad for you, so the whole benefit must be from something else. Enter resveratrol, the ...

Over the past few weeks there has been a flurry of news coverage over a clinical study finding that de-alcoholized red wine lowered blood pressure, but not whole wine. The usual interpretation was that wine without the alcohol was probably a better choice for health, with the blood pressure drop projected to equate to about a 14% decrease in heart disease risk. Supplement makers proclaimed that their wine-derived resveratrol pills were therefore a smarter choice, others concluded that grape juice would do the trick. But other studies out on alcohol found unique benefits, and as you have seen here before a broader view is needed in order to see the picture clearly. As with most studies, the blood pressure experiment had problems. For one, there was no “control” group for comparison. But the bigger question always is whether these findings translate into anything meaningful in terms of overall health and longevity. It is not reasonable to assume that a single parameter such as bl...

The American Heart Association recently released the results of a survey of Americans on their knowledge of healthy drinking and consumption of sea salt. No surprise, they concluded that we have it all wrong. On the plus side, two thirds agreed with the statement that wine is good for the heart, but less than one third know the AHA’s recommended limits of a daily glass or two for men and no more than one for women. The survey showed that “we need to do a better job of educating people about the heart-health risks of overconsumption of wine” according to a spokesperson. I say bless their hearts but their paternalistic message only adds to the confusion. For starters, they don’t even have their definitions right, which is a 5-ounce pour as the standard on which research and policymakers have long agreed, but the AHA cuts it back to 4. Granted, they have come a long way since the mid 1990’s when the official policy grudgingly acknowledged that a glass or two a day “might be considered...

Although the holidays are a festive time of year, for some it can be depressing. Those with drinking problems have a particularly difficult time, and I cannot in good conscience recommend alcohol as a therapy for the seasonal blues. There is some intriguing evidence however that substances in wine can help fight depression. Two studies from the same lab at the University of Santiago in Spain looked at the activity of the wine-derived compound resveratrol, and a cousin molecule called “trans-epsilon viniferin” (which is 2 resveratrol molecules linked together) on release of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This is the same molecule that many prescription antidepressants target, and with both wine substances the levels of serotonin were elevated in the same way. Another target of antidepressants called MAO inhibitors, were similarly found to have a parallel effect from the wine derivatives. A limiting factor is that these studies were in brain tissue from rats, so it is a big leap to conc...

The holidays are always a tricky time of year for those concerned about healthy eating, which of course should be all of us. We gather around food and drink, celebrate all that is good in our lives, and toast to friendship and goodwill. And we hit the buffet, usually not featuring low-cal and low fat options, so it is no wonder that average weight gain this time of year in the range of 10-15 pounds is the norm. Fortunately, there is one sacrifice that we don’t have to make. Red wine might actually help minimize the weight gain and other adverse effects of high fat meals. First the general advice: Scan the buffet first, before getting in line, so you can save room on your plate for healthier choices. Make portion control your mantra, and try for a mix of carbohydrates and proteins along with higher fat foods. Don’t deprive yourself of what you like, just don’t have as much of it. Another helpful suggestion is replace sweet with spicy. Standard advice usually also includes a caution to k...

By all accounts, the coming flu season is going to be a doozy unless we all get our H1N1 vaccination soon. There’s always the plain old cold too of course. I can never remember whether we are supposed to starve a cold and feed a fever or the other way around, but new findings suggest that regardless of the symptoms, respiratory viruses can be kept at bay by drinking wine. It’s not as farfetched as it sounds. A few years ago, researchers in Spain looked into the question of how wine drinking habits relate to the risk of colds. Their subjects were 4000 faculty members of five universities across the country, who were tracked during cold & flu season for the number and severity of illnesses. When the data was cross-referenced to drinking patterns, they found that consumers of at least 2 glasses of wine a day were only half as likely to contract a viral illness as nondrinkers, and the correlation was stronger for red wine drinkers than for white. What’s more, the duration of illness wa...

Napoleon is credited with saying that champagne is deserved in victory, and necessary in defeat. I say it is time to celebrate because the second edition of Age Gets Better with Wine is here! The timing couldn't be better, with all of the controversy about resveratrol and so many companies trying to convince us that we just need to take a pill with "all of wine's benefits" and skip the part about drinking wine. If that's your view, you really need to read the book. It is availablke at http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ . Check out the cool cover design.