wine and health

Last week the news was that wine is supposedly equal to any other type of alcoholic beverage in encouraging the development of cancer, particularly of the digestive tract, even when consumed in moderate amounts. This week it is the opposite, at least in terms of one especially nasty type of cancer involving the esophagus. Wine drinkers, it turns out, have a lower risk because they tend not to get as much reflux of stomach acid up into the lower esophagus, which causes inflammation. This condition is called Barrett's esophagus and is not only miserable but potentially deadly because it predisposes to cancer. It reminds me of my days as a general surgery resident, when one of the most common conditions leading to surgery was stomach ulcers. (They are prone to bleeding and numerous other unfortunate consequences.) Standard advice regarding ulcers was to avoid spicy foods and alcohol, in the belief that these encouraged the stomach to produce more acid. It was some years later that we ...