wine and health

87. Ernest Hemingway wrote that "wine is one of the most civilized things in the world." I say that not only is that true, but wine may have made civilization as we know it possible. When hunter-gatherer societies first congregated into villages and cities, the notion of septic systems hadn't been worked out so water supplies became of questionable safety. The practice of adding wine to water made it safer to drink, as Louis Pasteur observed a few thousand years later. 88. Wine became further entrenched in civilization during the golden age of Greece. Plato, who articulated so many of the tenets on which modern societies are organized, brought great thinkers together in what were called "symposia" which derives from the words "to drink together." Many of our most cherished institutions were conceived during these drinking sessions. 89. The notion of moderation is also an ancient one. The Roman orator Pliny the Elder noted "Nothing is more useful t...

85. When I was in my general surgery residency before training in plastic surgery, we did a lot of surgery for peptic ulcers, which are prone to bleeding and causing major problems. Advice for dealing with ulcers always included things like avoiding spicy foods and alcohol. some years later, it was determined that most ulcers are associated with a particular type of bacteria, not simply excess acid. As it turns out, wine polyphenols inhibit this bacteria (called Helicobacter pylorii), so better advice is to drink wine. Another one of those counterintuitive things about healthy drinking. 86. In the same vein, another problem is refulux of gastric acids into the esophagus, which over time causes changes in the esophageal lining leading to a particularly nasty type of cancer. Interestingly, red wine seems to thwart these changes, another counterintuitive finding.

84. Wine contains compounds that inhibit the toxins from bacteria in the mouth that form plaques leading to cavities. Who know purple teeth were healthy teeth?

83. Wine drinkers are less likely to have the most common type of stroke, which is caused by blood clotting in the arteries to the brain as with heart attack. Since stroke is a major cause of disability and death, any benefit here is worth celebrating. 84. When the clot causing a stroke (or a heart attack) is dissolved, blood rushes in bringing oxygen to the cells that have been suffering for lack of it. Some of these cells will have already died, but many are capable of surviving if blood flow is restored soon enough. Paradoxically though, the toxins that have been building up are released with the restoration of blood flow, causing further damage. (This is know as ischemia-reperfusion injury.) Resveratrol and other wine polyphenols have been shown to dramatically improve cell survival after ischemia-reperfusion.

In this section we consider one of the major epidemics of our times, Alzheimer's disease. With the baby boom generation graying, the millions of new cases of this debilitating problem loom ominously. Drug therapies to date have had disappointing results. Fortunately, there is some evidence that wine drinking and other lifestyle factors can have an effect. So our count of 101 healthy reasons to drink wine continues with: 79. The Canadian Study of Health and Aging found that wine, coffee, regular exercise, and anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen were associated with the lowest risk of Alzheimer's. 80. The Copenhagen City Heart Study, a 15-year follow-up of more than 1700 subjects, found that wine consumption but not beer or spirits correlated with lower risk of Alzheimer's. 81. The Catholic University of Rome multicenter study found that drinking up to 2 bottles of wine per day for men and one for women correlated with higher scores on standardized testing of mental acuity and...

78. How does wine help the brain? One answer might be the ingredient quercetin, which may help with spatial learning and memory. Researchers at Nanjing University in China reported that mice given quercetin did a much better job at remembering how to navigate a maze. It was attributed to activation of enzymes in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, one of the key areas for memory.

77. Continuing our line of thought on wine and the brain, we turn to the question of alcohol's effects. Haven't we always assumed that alcohol kills brain cells, and so any positive aspects of drinking must be weighed against this? True, at high doses alcohol (as with anything for that matter) is toxic, but a recent review from Loyola University pointed to experimental evidence that moderate alcohol levels exert direct "neuroprotective" actions; that is, in addition to promoting healthy blood vessels that improve blood flow to the brain, the direct effects of alcohol on nerve cells are protective, at least in moderate amounts. Add this to the list of healthy effects of alcohol in moderation where cardiovascular disease is concerned, and keep it in mind the next time you see an ad for some supplement touting "all the benefits of wine without the alcohol" because that is of course not possible.