wine and health

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...

An article just out this week suggests that resveratrol actually cancels the beneficial effects of exercise in older men. This widely cited study, not yet even in print, was a randomized prospective clinical trial in which healthy but inactive men were placed on an exercise program and given either a 250 mg resveratrol supplement or placebo.   Exercise tolerance (measured by maximum oxygen uptake), improved cholesterol profiles, and blood pressure indicators in a group of men average age 65 were all improved after 6 weeks in the placebo group as compared to those taking resveratrol , who had no significant changes.   This runs counter to expectations from several previous studies (mostly on mice) that suggested the opposite. Resveratrol has even been touted as a performance-enhancing supplement! This is one reason why use of supplements based primarily on animal studies is problematic; when tested in humans, data may be contradictory. The real questions are how and why...

When I first developed our resveratrol-based antioxidant skin care product Veraderma in conjunction with Calidora Skin Clinics in 2008, I had good reason to believe in its potent anti-aging capabilities. Resveratrol , the multipurpose miracle molecule whose most familiar source is wine grape skins (hence red wine because it is fermented with the skins), has become a bit of a sensation since then. Several major skin care companies now include wine compounds in their products, and the science continues to reinforce the role of resveratrol in healthy skin (even if its use as an oral supplement remains to be proven.) One example comes from independent research underwritten by L’Oreal, which found that there are specific resveratrol “binding sites” in human skin cells that mediate resveratrol’s protective properties. These binding sites appear to trigger changes within the cells rendering them resistant to damage from environmental toxins. Notably, resveratrol was more effective t...

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 ...

This has been a year of continued affirmation of the role of wine as a central component of healthy living, but rather than a review I would like to pay tribute to Serge Renaud, considered by many to be the father of the “French paradox.” It was a seminal moment in 1991, on the CBS-television show “60 Minutes” when Dr. Renaud offered that “A moderate and regular wine consumption of one to three drinks per day, which is common in France, protects us” from the much higher incidence of heart disease in America.   Dr. Renaud collapsed walking to the beach near his Mediterranean home on October 28 at age 85. Though born the son of a winemaker, Renaud’s early studies focused on dietary factors comprising what would later come to be known as the Mediterranean Diet. There were important differences in the composition of dietary fats -specifically omega -3 and 6 fatty acids - that seemed to hold the key. Over time however it became apparent that regular wine consumption was a critica...

If you are prone to headaches from red wine, would you drink wine made from genetically modified yeast if you knew you wouldn’t react to it? The problem of headaches from wine is one of the most frequent questions I get at lectures on wine and health. From an anti-aging point of view, evidence clearly points to red wine as a healthy habit. But if it gives you headaches, it just isn’t worth it. The good news is that we know what causes the headaches and how to make wine that doesn’t provoke them; the bad news is that almost no one is making wine that way.   The reasons behind this are enough to cause befuddle the brain and cause a headache all over again. You can thank University of British Columbia Biotechnology Professor Hennie van Vuuren for developing the solution. A sufferer of the red wine syndrome himself, Dr. van Vuuren has been working on the solution for some 15 years. The problem stems from compounds called biogenic amines, which include histamine and some rather...