wine and health

The ever-quotable Sir Winston Churchill once said “however beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” and that is especially true for any proposed intervention to improve health and longevity. Whether we are talking about a glass of red wine with dinner or a potential  blockbuster drug, clinical trials are the only objective way to know if it actually works. Drugs are required to prove their safety and effectiveness through prospective, randomized, double-blind trials, meaning that potential bias is minimized.  It’s tougher to do with lifestyle interventions like drinking wine, so we have relied on other types of studies. (These include for example  observationa l or  epidemiologic  studies, which track health outcomes correlating to lifestyle factors.) There are nevertheless a few clinical trials on wine and health worth noting: In 2015 the outcome of a 2-year interventional trial comparing the effects of red or white wine vs. no ...

The holiday season is a time of conviviality, and nothing is more celebratory than wine. As we raise our glasses to toast friendships and family, we remember that wine symbolizes health and happiness. But it is all too easy to fall out of the habits that define healthy drinking, and moderation hardly seems a festive theme. With that in mind, here are a few (science-based) tips for healthy drinking: 1.        Stick with wine. Peak blood alcohol levels are lower after wine consumption as opposed to spirits, even when the amount of alcohol is the same. (The same applies for beer, but beer lacks the beneficial polyphenols of wine.) Mixed drinks also tend to contain more calories from sugar, while calories from alcohol avoid spikes in blood sugar levels. 2.        Whenever possible have food with wine. Alcohol is absorbed much more rapidly on an empty stomach, even for wine. What’s more, wine with meals dampens down what is cal...

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...

With breast cancer awareness month upon us again, it’s fair to ask what we have learned about prevention and treatment, and for wine drinkers, it remains a confusing picture. It’s clear that heavy alcohol consumption increases risk, not so certain whether moderation – especially wine – is all that bad; it might even be good. On one hand, the message from the medical community is unambiguous: any level of drinking increases the odds of developing breast cancer. On the other hand, at moderate levels of drinking, cancer risk is extremely difficult to measure with confidence, even more so with wine. Here’s why I think a daily glass or two of red wine with dinner is still a healthy choice:    A recent study from the University of California San Diego [1] looked at survival and recurrence after breast cancer treatment, finding that light drinking had no correlation. Moderate alcohol intake was “protective against all-cause mortality” in non-obese women.    There app...

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...

Summer has me thinking about skin cancer (I am a plastic surgeon after all) and recent reports that drinking alcohol increases the risk of skin cancer are not helping to ease my mind. "Drinking just one glass of beer or wine a day could give you skin cancer, scientists have warned," reports Britain’s Mail Online.   Researchers reached this conclusion by analyzing pooled results from previous studies (the notorious meta-analysis; see last month’s post.) It seems that every drink increases your odds of developing non-melanoma skin cancer by around 10 percent. But just as blending random wines together may produce something drinkable but lacking nuance, pooling results of different types of studies may obscure crucial details. With the specific question of wine consumption and skin cancer risk, the details are especially important. Is skin cancer risk the same with all types of alcohol? Granted, some of the studies are very well done and should not be dismissed out of ha...

What used to be accepted as gospel – that moderate drinkers are healthier than nondrinkers or heavy drinkers – has been challenged in recent years, and a new study to be conducted by the National Institutes of Health aims to settle the question once and for all. The study plans to enroll about 8,000 volunteers aged 50 or older from around the world, who will be assigned to avoid drinking or have one drink per day for 6 years. The lack of such large scale prospective studies is one reason why the question of alcohol’s influence on health and longevity remains subject to debate. However I am not sure the study will yield the answers it seeks to, but not for the reasons others are already finding to criticize the project.  It’s an ambitious undertaking, with an equally ambitious price tag of US$100 million. The plan is for most of the money to come from the alcoholic beverage industry through grants, and $68 million has reportedly already been pledged. Skeptics point out that many...