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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Even for those that rarely drink, holiday parties and New Year’s celebration offer more occasions than normal to have a glass of good cheer. And, red wine is good for you isn’t it? Red wine does contain resveratrol, a substance found in grape skins that may help protect you against heart disease and cancer. But, the picture isn’t totally rosy.
A study (http://spo.escardio.org/SessionDetails.aspx?eevtid=69&sessId=14105&subSessId=3534) done in the Czech Republic has shed new light on the wine controversy. Two groups of people were given moderate amounts of either red wine or white wine and instructed to drink the wine no more than five times a week for one year. Each participant kept a journal recording a number of health factors in addition to their wine intake. After one year the researchers found no difference between the red and white wine when it came to protecting against heart disease.
The study did find something very interesting, however. In people who exercised at least twice a week and drank either type of wine, their HDL (good) cholesterol went up and their LDL (bad) cholesterol went down. This is a definite sign that the combination of wine and exercise does protect the heart. The researchers speculated that the ethyl alcohol in the wine plus exercise is the combination that was necessary to lower the risk for heart disease and any type of wine would do.
That does not mean that resveratrol found in red wine has no benefit. Good health is the cumulative effect of many factors, not one magic bullet. Resveratrol is one of those many factors that support good health by reducing inflammatory factors in the body that promote heart disease. We now know that the risk for heart disease is significantly higher in people who suffer from chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. Anything that can be done to reduce inflammation will bring down the risk for inflammatory diseases as well as reduce the risk for a heart attack or stroke. (http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/10/28/nar.gku1033.abstract)
Alcohol of any kind damages your cells. If the damage is minor, your body can repair it. But, the more you drink, the more cells you damage. As damaged cells accumulate, there is less chance that your body can keep up with the repair and cancer-causing cells have the opportunity to duplicate and thrive causing disease. Drinking is a major risk factor for head and neck cancer.
When you look at population studies and compare those who usually drink red wine with those who drink other types of alcohol, the red wine drinkers have the lowest incidence of head and neck cancer. Research done at the University of Colorado at Denver (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25427916) has begun to unravel how resveratrol in red wine may play a role in preventing cancer. Their work showed that resveratrol and other cancer-protecting substances found in grape seed extract kill the most dangerously damaged cells and reduce the probability that they will cause cancer. Resveratrol not only inhibits cancer cell growth but it promotes cancer cell death as well, blocking the cancer-causing effect of alcohol.
Before you pop that wine cork in the name of good health, we need to examine the other side of the alcohol – good for you, bad for you – issue. Drinking too much can speed up memory loss. Most of the information we have on memory loss and alcohol comes from studies of older adults. But a recent study (http://www.neurology.org/content/82/4/332) that followed over 7,000 middle-aged adults showed that men who drank two and a half drinks a day showed memory loss quicker than those who drank less than two drinks a day or those who did not drink at all. In some cases the decline in memory function happened up to six years earlier than the moderate or abstaining groups.
What does all this mean? Moderation. Pick wine over hard alcohol and drink less of both, but enjoy what you drink.
© NRH Nutrition Consultants, Inc.
Jo-Ann Heslin, MA, RD, CDN is a registered dietitian and the author of the nutrition counter series for Pocket Books with sales of more than 8.5 million books.
Look for:
The Diabetes Counter, 5th Ed., 2014
The Fat and Cholesterol Counter, 2014
The Most Complete Food Counter, 3rd ed., 2013
The Calorie Counter, 6th Ed., 2013
The Complete Food Counter, 4th ed., 2012
The Protein Counter, 3rd Ed., 2011
The Ultimate Carbohydrate Counter, 3rd Ed., 2010
The Healthy Wholefoods Counter, 2008
Your Complete Food Counter App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/your-complete-food-counter/id444558777?mt=8
For more information on Jo-Ann and her books, go to: www.TheNutritionExperts.com.
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