wine and health

French health minister Agnès Buzyn recently created a major buzzkill across the winemaking world by denouncing claims that wine could be beneficial and increase longevity. Ms. Buzyn, a hematologist, broke with wine loving President Emmanuel Macron, saying in a television interview that “The French population is led to believe that wine protects them, that it offers benefits that other alcohol does not. Scientifically, wine is an alcohol like any other.” This is true only in the narrowest sense, and wrong in the larger sense. Here’s why: Yes, it’s technically accurate to state that alcohol (ethanol) distilled from wine, beer or spirits is the same, but the conclusion that all beverages are equally detrimental is fallacious. We don’t consume the alcohol independently of the source. The benefits of wine are attached to the lifestyle of moderate consumption with meals; the pattern of drinking matters. But to the larger point, wine’s health benefits are not exclusively derived from...

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...

That “gut feeling” you sometimes get may be more literal than you think: research continues to reveal the importance of the bacteria in our digestive tract, called the “gut microbiome.”  This symbiotic population of microbes affects health and well-being in often unexpected ways. The microbiome sends signals to the central nervous system, regulates inflammation, even influences cardiovascular health. Wine’s impact on health appears to depend significantly on the microbiome, and we are now learning that it may not actually be the constituents of wine that make it healthy for us; it is the things that the microbiome transforms them into. How wine promotes a healthy microbiome Wine’s relationship with the microbiome is a two-way street: Recent studies [1]  demonstrate how wine consumption influences the composition of the various bacteria, while other research demonstrates how the microbiome metabolizes wine into components that boost the immune system. [2] The idea th...

In an era of fake news, alternative facts, and conflicting advice on healthy drinking from even the most reliable sources, it is important to understand where reporting on clinical science can go awry. Does a glass of wine before bed help you to lose weight? A widely reported study last year seemed to suggest just that, at least if you only looked at the headlines. How about a glass of wine a day is as good as an hour at the gym? Both of these might be true - if you are a mouse - and substituting resveratrol for wine. Of mice and men - and medicine The journey from the research lab to the clinic is known as translational medicine, and the process can be long and unpredictable. Take for example the hypothesis that resveratrol alters metabolism in a way that mimics exercise (and ignore for the moment the separate idea that resveratrol supplementation is the same as drinking wine.)  There are limits on what sort of interventional studies you can do to test this idea on humans, ...

  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...

It has become common to think of the antioxidant molecule resveratrol as the main beneficial ingredient in wine, but a new study sheds light on how resveratrol without the other components of wine might actually be a bad thing. Sure, resveratrol is a miracle molecule, providing a plausible explanation for many of the health benefits of moderate drinking: lower odds of diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, even longer life by activation of longevity genes. I leaned heavily on these findings in the book. But what I didn’t anticipate was that resveratrol would become such a hugely popular supplement, and in many people’s minds it became a proxy for wine. If a study showed some failing of resveratrol in a laboratory study, it was put out as a denunciation of healthy drinking. Or when it showed some positive effect in mice, it was hailed as proof that resveratrol had all the benefits of wine – without the alcohol. Both are oversimplifications. Resveratrol works best when combined with othe...

When they come out with a coffee infused with resveratrol, that’s how you know it’s just gone too far. Vera Roasting Company just announced their “ CoffVee” blend , intended to bring “the heart-healthy benefits of red wine” to coffee. Like makers of resveratrol supplements, the idea is based on the claim that it is possible for consumers “to enjoy the heart-healthy benefits of a glass of red wine” with every cup, “minus the alcohol.” If only it were so simple. Here’s why infusing coffee with resveratrol is a bad idea: Coffee is already a heart-healthy drink. Coffee contains some very potent natural antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, so the addition of resveratrol is unnecessary. A study just out last month evaluated overall causes of mortality in a large population found that coffee consumption was related to lower chances of dying from heart disease, as well as respiratory diseases, diabetes, and pneumonia. The researchers attributed this to improved insulin sensitiv...

There’s nothing like a good study on red wine as a weight loss aid to get attention, but in the case of a recent study from Washington State University it’s not quite so simple. Gilliam Fuller, writing for Elite Daily, led with “ Drink Up: Science Says Red Wine Can Actually Help You LoseWeight ” while the Sentinel Republic headlined simply “ Red wine can help you lose weight .” Meanwhile Chris Mercer reported in Decanter.com on the United Kingdom’s National Health Service weighing in with “ Red wine weight loss theory is ‘nonsense ’.” They’re all partly right, but mostly wrong. The study analyzed fat metabolism in mice given resveratrol, finding that it promoted conversion of normal white fat cells into brown fat, which is associated with higher metabolism and less weight retention. It was a well done study, but findings in mice given resveratrol cannot be directly extrapolated to humans consuming wine. So UK health officials were correct in stating that “‘based on mice studies onl...

Did you remember to have a glass of wine last night? If not, it may be because you didn't have a glass of wine to help you remember. The association of wine consumption and better memory has long been suspected, especially as it relates to cognitive decline with advancing age. Studies consistently find a correlation between long term moderate wine consumption and better mental function in older populations, but clinical studies – where one group is prospectively compared to another – are still hard to come by. One such study comes from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Berlin. They compared 23 older adults given resveratrol for 26 weeks to an equal number given placebo. Before and after the study period, subjects underwent memory tasks and neuroimaging to assess volume and functional neural connectivity of the hippocampus, a key region implicated in memory. The resveratrol group had improvements in memory retention and increased neural connectiv...

Much has been made recently about pro basketballer Amar’e Stoudemire’s “vinotherapy ” rehab program, which involves soaking in red wine baths. I tried it myself a few years ago at the Caudalie spa in Bordeaux, and while it was a fabulous experience I would put it more into the pampering category than physical rehab. But the practice does raise a lot of questions, and as with so many issues about wine and health there is a kernel of truth shrouded by a layer of hype. Dr. Richard Baxter and Mathilde Thomas For deep healing to happen, something would have to be absorbed from the wine in significant enough amounts to have an effect, and there is scant evidence that this occurs. A more realistic concept is rejuvenation of the skin, which can absorb certain compounds found in wine. Resveratrol, a powerful antioxidant, has received much attention both as a supplement and a skin care product. But just as there is not enough resveratrol in wine to explain wine’s health benefits alone,...

A recent column in MarketWatch called “10 things your winemaker won’t tell you” has provoked considerable controversy, and the way I see it the statements about wine and health are particularly off base. So my response is a list of what your doctor probably won’t tell you; part of this will refute the MarketWatch piece, part of it will get at the misconceptions that underlie the problem. Author Catey Hill does make some interesting and valid points, but the question of healthy drinking is just too big to be distilled into a paragraph or two. I do know this though: it isn’t the winemaker’s job to tell you about its health benefits, and in fact the feds take a pretty dim view of that idea.        1.         Hill states “Scan any health website these days and you’re likely to find at least one article touting the health benefits of wine, among them heart health and longevity—all the more so since the recent discovery of the antioxidant resverat...

Recent reports that “red wine is not great for health after all” and that “no amount of alcohol is safe” are just plain wrong. This type of misguided reporting and misinterpretation of scientific studies is one of the reasons for my book Age Gets Better with Wine . How is it that the story is still so confused? Kicking off the latest round of hype was a report issued bythe World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer . Noting that the risk is dose-dependent, meaning that heavy drinking has a stronger correlation with some types of cancer, the authors of the report concluded that even moderate drinking carries some degree of risk. This was followed by release of a study in Italy that looked at dietary levels of resveratrol and incidence of diseases of aging. Since the most well-known source of resveratrol is red wine, the lack of a benefit from higher resveratrol consumption was reported as casting doubt on the benefits of red wine. So here we go again: I...

Resveratrol, the miracle molecule from red wine, has rocketed from relative obscurity to celebrity status in the supplement market. Its multiple anti-aging properties are given credit for this, and I used resveratrol research in my book “Age Gets Better with Wine” to explain why moderate regular consumption of red wine is a healthy thing. Supplement marketers now proclaim that resveratrol pills have “all the benefits of wine without the alcohol” and tout their own special formulas. Yet there remains a lack of large well-controlled clinical studies to back up these claims. A relatively new field of medical science called translational medicine helps explain the problem. Often called “bench to bedside” research, translational medicine seeks to bridge the gap between laboratory studies and validated clinical treatments. The challenge of translational medicine is enormous, given that more than 90% of treatments (say for example a drug or supplement) fail in human trials after...

What would the ideal anti-aging skin care product look like? To begin with, it would need to provide protection against sun damage from UV exposure . [i] Of course any sunscreen does that, so what we really want is something that can help reverse the effects of UV exposure, which include mutations in the DNA of skin cells. This is where the idea of working at a molecular level comes into play. While many products talk about “DNA repair” the evidence for a role for resveratrol is particularly strong. There are several ways that resveratrol functions in this regard, the best known of which is its powerful antioxidant effects. Healthier DNA means not only more attractive skin but a lower risk of skin cancers . The use of antioxidants such as resveratrol to lower risk of skin cancer is known as chemoprevention. There is evidence that it may help prevent many other types of cancer as well. Another measure of aging has to do with integrity of sequences on the ends of the chromosom...