Cheers to the good life

Natural Health, Sept, 2004 by Mary Ellen Strote

The secret to red wine is skin deep. Polyphenols, powerful antioxidants in the skin and seeds of grapes, give red wine its rich color and steeped-tea flavor. A bottle of red wine contains 1.5 to 2 grams of polyphenols. (White wine contains a tenth of that amount.) These free-radical fighters, which include tannins, anthocyanins, catechins and resveratrol, keep blood vessels supple, prevent arterial plaques and blood clots, lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, reduce blood pressure and slow age-related cognitive decline. In laboratory studies done by David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., associate professor at Harvard Medical School, resveratrol mimicked the effect of a very low-calorie diet, which greatly prolongs life in animal tests. Meanwhile, the alcohol in wine boosts HDL (good) cholesterol and strengthens the cardiovascular system, according to reports in the British Medical Journal and the New England Journal of Medicine.

These benefits presume consumption in moderation: no more than one 4-ounce glass daily for women and two for men, says the American Heart Association. Excessive and binge drinking quash the bounty of wine and can lead to liver disease, stroke, high blood pressure and obesity.

Regular, modest amounts of wine provide more protection than abstaining or heavy drinking, according to Danish researchers who analyzed the drinking patterns of 24,523 people. Compared to non-drinkers, people who drank one to three glasses of wine a day were 36 percent less likely to die from coronary heart disease and 24 percent less likely to die from any cause. Heavy drinking (more than three glasses of wine a day) cut the protection to just 10 percent.

While a stable and judicious drinking pattern is common in many European countries, it's antithetical to our way of imbibing, says Andrew Waterhouse, Ph.D., professor of viticulture and oenology at the University of California at Davis. "The expectation in America is that we drink only on the weekends and to get intoxicated. If you say you drink every day, people think, 'Wow, you get drunk every day?'"

Boston University epidemiologist Curtis Ellison, M.D., agrees: "It's really a shame the Puritans got to Plymouth Rock before the Italians. We'd have a much healthier attitude toward drinking if the Italians got here first."

One caveat: Even moderate drinking may be unwise where there are family histories of alcohol abuse or breast cancer. A study in the International Journal of Cancer showed that women who drank more than 1.5 glasses of wine a day were twice as likely to develop breast cancer; other studies surest that heavy drinking lowers folate and vitamin [B.sub.12] levels, deficiencies that may increase risk. But Ellison points out that when a postmenopausal woman stops light drinking in an effort to lower her risk of breast cancer, she may be increasing her significantly more likely risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. "Women with a first-degree relative with breast cancer or other risk factors should consult their physicians to determine if drinking alcohol is wise," he says. (Despite France's higher wine consumption, its breast-cancer rate is about 5 percent lower than in the U.S.)