|
Here's to Your Health
When offered grapes after dinner, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin refused, saying: "I am not accustomed to taking my wine in pills." The nineteenth-century French gastronome would be shocked to learn that not only do some tipplers today take their wine as they would medication, but there are also pills actually claiming to have the same health benefits as red wine. (There is no indication on the labels of whether the tablets go best with game, foul or roast beef.)
Many of us remember the 1980s studies indicating that even though the French eat more red meat and fattier foods, smoke more frequently and exercise less often than North Americans, they have forty percent fewer heart attacks. This is particularly significant, given that cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in North America. The surprising conclusion - the French drink more red wine.
Research has shown that moderate wine drinking reduces the risk of heart disease by increasing the level of "good" HDL cholesterol in the blood. HDL cholesterol carries away surplus cholesterol to the liver for disposal. At the same time, wine prevents the "bad" LDL cholesterol from oxidizing, which would cause plaque to cling to the walls of arteries and could lead to heart attacks. Wine also relaxes the muscles in the arteries so they do not contract and cause high blood pressure and restricted blood flow. And wine makes blood platelets more slippery, reducing the risk of clotting.
During the last five years, there have been dramatic advances in research focusing on the specific components of wine. Scientists believe that more than 200 of wine's chemical compounds contribute to positive health benefits in the form of antioxidants, which are the agents that inhibit the oxidizing of cholesterol in the blood. Oxidation triggers the aging process that turns butter rancid, makes steel rust and, in our bodies, causes arteries to clog. Some of the more potent antioxidants in wine are phenolic compounds such as flavonoids, tannins and eicosanoides. The flavonoids in red wine are ten to twenty times more powerful than those found in vegetables and twenty times more powerful than those found in white wine.
But it is the antioxidant resveratrol that has attracted the most attention. Grapes produce resveratrol in their skin as protection against fungus. Since the grapes for red wine are fermented with the skins on, the wine they produce has the highest concentration of resveratrol and therefore the greatest benefit compared with both white wine and other types of alcohol. And Canadian wines actually contain more resveratrol than wines from warmer climates because the grapes grown here must protect themselves from the damp, cool weather. In addition to climate, less hardy grape varieties such as pinot noir appear to have more resveratrol than the hardier varietals such as cabernet sauvignon. Nevertheless, all red wines seem to provide benefits.
"No one is advocating getting blitzed every night," says Irvin Wolkoff, a Toronto psychiatrist and wine columnist for The Medical Post.
"Conservative estimates are one 5 oz [175 mL] glass per day for women and one to two glasses for men - although these will probably go up over time as more research is made available. You also can't save up for a week and drink it all Saturday night. The full benefit is derived by drinking moderately every day."
The term "moderation" depends on the size of the drinker. For example, both smaller people and women have lower alcohol tolerance thresholds. Jacques LeCavalier, chief executive officer of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA), agrees that moderation is critical, but says drinking alcohol is not without risk.
"That's why we have published low-risk - not no-risk - drinking guidelines," says LeCavalier. "There are certain groups for whom drinking is not appropriate." Among those groups are people taking certain medications, operating vehicles or machinery, those responsible for public safety, as well as minors and pregnant women. Otherwise, the impact of moderate drinking could be highly positive.
According to David Goldberg, a leading researcher of resveratrol and professor of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at the University of Toronto: "American health economists have estimated that if every adult North American drank two glasses of wine each day, cardiovascular disease, which accounts for almost fifty percent of deaths in this population, would be cut by forty percent and $40 billion could be saved annually."
Apparently, wine can benefit both heart and head. According to a recent French study of moderate drinkers, there was a reduction of the risk of Alzheimer's disease by seventy-five percent and dementia by eighty percent. Those in the study also performed best on a test of cognitive function and were less prone to depression in the face of stress. The research challenge now is to understand why and how this is so.
Do the components of wine, the way wine is consumed or the lifestyles of wine drinkers result in longer, healthier lives? Although it is hard to isolate these factors, they do seem to have a combined beneficial effect. For example, drinking wine with dinner stimulates favourable biochemical interactions that can reduce the risk of certain chronic diseases. Consuming wine with dinner also assures that the protective effects of the alcohol are strongest in the evening, when fats from dinner circulate through the bloodstream, carrying over to the next morning when most heart attacks take place.
Beyond heart, head and stomach, some researchers believe that wine has other wide-reaching impacts on health: "We conclude that a moderate intake of alcohol, mostly in the form of wine, seems to protect individuals from premature death, not only coronary heart disease and cardiovascular diseases in general, but also from other causes," reports Serge Renaud, a French researcher who found that those who drank two to three glasses of wine daily had a thirty percent reduction in premature death from all causes.
Even without the benefit of this research, the doctor of Louis XIV recommended that the French king drink Burgundy's pinot noir wine for his health back in 1680. So why aren't more doctors today advising us to drink wine? The problem is that many physicians hesitate to recommend moderate drinking for fear that some patients will drink excessively, potentially resulting in liver damage, hypertension, drunken driving, family problems, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome and exacerbation of existing diseases such as low blood pressure. Many also have concerns regarding the legal liability related to these issues.
Wolkoff expects that within two or three years, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada will likely establish a policy on moderate drinking that includes the health benefits of wine. Currently, the professional association has a statement only on the dangers of excessive drinking.
New dietary guidelines in the United States go so far as to recommend that "if you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in moderation, with meals, and when consumption does not put you or others at risk." This may encourage more doctors to discuss the benefits of drinking wine with their patients. So while wine is not medicine, it is comforting to know that not only can you enjoy it, you may live a longer, healthier life drinking it.
|
