Sniffing Cork: Bench-Top Boozing and the Health Effects of Red Wine
“If wine is so good for you, why do I feel like shit this morning?” asked a visiting college friend.
“Because you drank a bottle and a half by yourself and then ate two chalupas,” I responded, “and I’m pretty sure that none of the studies evaluating the health benefits of red wine have ever included slamming three-buck-Chuck and Taco Bell, but I could be wrong.”
“Yeah… But wouldn’t it be great if you could get hammered and it was, like, good for you?” It was this sort of statement that made me understand why my wife is never all that enthused about my college friends coming to visit. Plus she caught him picking up every single slice of leftover Thanksgiving turkey with his sticky fingers, returning pieces to the Tupperware until he found one that best suited his needs. From that point on, she refused to eat any more leftover turkey.
But my friend got me thinking about this whole red wine ass-kiss that’s been going on for over a decade now. You know how every month or so we find Sanjay Gupta’s toothy mug on CNN reporting on the latest in a seemingly endless string of conditions for which red wine is supposed to be the magic elixir? Heart attack. Stroke. Dementia. Cancer. Obesity. Diabetes. Aging…and God knows what else – maybe scabies? In fact, just a few weeks ago the cable news channel ran a story called “Red wine wonder drug?” with the tagline: “The answer to losing weight and living longer may be in red wine.”
So is red wine really the first substance in history to go against that well-known rule of adulthood: Anything that’s delicious or that makes you feel good probably also makes you fat, stupid, and impotent? Or, does all this favorable evidence originate from someplace darker and self-serving? In fact, I have an unfounded suspicion that most red wine investigators are unhappy, aging men desperately trying to justify their alcoholism and/or bolster the wine-producing economies of the governments that fund their research. I have no proof of this, but it just seems too convenient that a vice as universal as wine should posses such extensive medicinal qualities. What’s next? That gambling or sleeping with prostitutes increases immune function and fights off infection? Why don’t we take a quick look at the evidence and see if we can detect any ulterior motives at work.
1992: The potential health benefits of wine garner their first wave of publicity thanks to Serge Renaud’s “French Paradox” paper, published in the revered English medical journal The Lancet. How can the French eat six pounds of butter a day followed by a course of fried sweetbreads and chocolate mousse and still have a lower incidence of heart disease than Americans? The answer: a shit-ton of red wine.
At the time, it was already known that alcohol in any form reduces the risk of heart disease, most likely by preventing atherosclerosis, the hardening and narrowing of the arteries in which cholesterol builds up along vessel walls. Renaud’s work suggested that red wine in particular was a “superior quality” alcohol, which had additional protective benefits over other forms of booze. While this sounds plausible, I’d like to point out one thing for all the freedom-lovers out there: This guy’s name is probably pronounced “Ren-oh,” not “Ren-aw-duh.” That’s right folks, Monsieur Renaud is most likely a wine-chugging Frenchman – and let’s not forget that France has an awful lot of vineyards that could benefit from increased wine sales.
1992-1993: Researchers out of UC Davis (mere hours from California’s wine-glutted Napa Valley) assert that it is wine’s antioxidant properties that explain its superiority in preventing heart disease. Antioxidants are all the rage these days because they prevent damage from extremely reactive molecules containing oxygen atoms with unpaired electrons (free radicals) that can damage cells and DNA through a chemical process called an “oxidation reaction.” Oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or the so-called “bad cholesterol” is thought to be one of the processes that leads to cardiovascular disease, and the researchers reason that red wine might act like a Berkeley policeman in the 1960s, reducing the number of free radicals at large and thus preventing the dangerous oxidation of LDL. The research team further concludes that red wine should be particularly beneficial, since most antioxidants in wine come from the skin, which as any sommelier will tell you, is removed in the making of white wine.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a group at Cornell University’s Department of Fruit and Vegetable Science finds that resveratrol, an antioxidant found in grape skins, significantly lowers lipid levels in the livers of rats and thus may be at least partially responsible for the health benefits of wine.
1997: An article published in Science by a group at the University of Illinois’s College of Pharmacy finds resveratrol to have chemotherapeutic properties, preventing the development of early stage breast and skin cancers in mice. Efficacy is seen at doses equivalent to those obtained from moderate red wine consumption, but results are much more dramatic at higher doses. Since every starving scientist dreams of eradicating cancer, these data help trigger a worldwide surge in resveratrol research.
2002: A group at the University of Missouri report for the first time that resveratrol can cross blood-brain barrier and protect against cerebral ischemic injury (i.e. stroke) in gerbils. Other work conducted around the same time shows that resveratrol protects against DNA damage in stroke-prone rats and may also inhibit cell death caused by oxidation. The only problem is, most of these studies are conducted using doses well out of the range realistically available through wine consumption, even for hardcore winos and guzzling alcoholics. In my mind you can almost hear wine sellers, drinkers, and researchers the world over swearing resoundingly together. Even though the evidence is strong that resveratrol is effective in preventing cardiovascular disease, such high doses must be delivered in a pill, not a glass. Now scientists were obligated to follow through with what appeared to be a promising new field of research, only they could no longer justify getting schnockered while doing so.
2004: A review article in Cardiovascular Drug Reviews concludes that resveratrol is a “highly promising” cardiovascular protective agent with the ability to “influence vascular cell function, inhibit LDL oxidation, suppress platelet aggregation and reduce myocardial damage during ischemic episodes.” In other words, resveratrol protects against cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke and heart attack, by preventing the narrowing and obstruction of blood vessels. They further posit that the compound is most likely effective at doses equivalent to those consumed in wine. “PHEW!” say the scientists. Everything’s back on track. Of course this study was conducted in Italy, which just happens to be the world’s leading exporter of wine.
2003-2006: Researchers around the world attempt to characterize the mechanism behind resveratrol’s influence on cardiovascular pathophysiology. Since there are way too many published works on the subject to review here, I’ll summarize by saying that many groups find the compound effective in preventing, and/or slowing the progression of cardiovascular disease, most likely by attenuating atherosclerosis through anti-oxidant activity. Resveratrol certainly looks promising, but again, many of the studies are conducted using unboozable doses.
2006-present: Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging report that resveratrol offsets the negative effects of a high-calorie diet in mice. The mice fed a high-fat diet develop diabetes, get fat and die, whereas those fed the same high-fat diet with a daily dose of resveratrol still get fat, but fail to develop diabetes. The resveratrol group also live considerably longer. This is like every American’s dream – eat all you want, get fat, drink heavily, and don’t suffer any negative health consequences. However, once again the doses used in this study were truly astronomical: equivalent to a human drinking 750-1500 bottles of wine a day!
A French study published in Cell reports that mice given resveratrol (at doses equivalent to slamming roughly 8000 bottles per day) become more athletic, as assessed using tiny mouse treadmills. Treated mice can run twice as far, and have reduced heart rates compared to controls. The article suggests that resveratrol activates certain enzymatic pathways, which lead to increased numbers of mitochondria in the muscles. (Often described as “the powerhouse of the cell,” mitochondria are the machinery in our cells responsible for producing useable energy from nutrients.) The Frenchies also demonstrate that resveratrol increases the clearance of free radicals generated by mitochondrial metabolism. In other words, resveratrol allows for increased endurance while eliminating the negative consequences that result from increased energy expenditure.
Another study out of Mt. Sinai involves feeding moderate amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon to what must have been the happiest mice in all of science. They conclude that red wine consumption in the amount of one glass a day for women and two for men is enough to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Ah ha! Isn’t it suspect that a team of mostly men would conclude that the hairier sex needs twice as much wine to fight off dementia as women! Oh wait, these are the amounts recommended by the FDA health guidelines as being beneficial without doing any harm. Never mind.
In conclusion, it does seem that there is good evidence that resveratrol, and by extension red wine, offers some form of health benefit. So maybe my theory that all wine researchers are alcoholics isn’t true – it’s probably only more like half. More importantly, a lot of work still has to be done to elucidate the mechanism of action and figure out the appropriate doses. With regards to the former, all that can be said at this point is that resveratrol’s broad efficacy is most likely due to its potent antioxidant properties. This seems like a pretty reasonable conclusion since free radicals play such an important role in heart disease, cancer and aging. With regard to dosing, there are still major disagreements about how much of this magic molecule one must ingest to garner any benefit. The levels of resveratrol contained in grapes, grape juice, and various other resveratrol-rich foods (for example, mulberries, peanuts, dark ales, and aged whiskey) are far less than those found in both red and white wine. The process of converting grapes into wine appears to greatly increases levels of resveratrol, making red wine (and to a lesser degree white) the only realistic dietary source of the compound. That said, the body of hard, scientific evidence supporting the low-dose, “drinkable” efficacy of resveratrol is small, and vitamin supplement makers are already starting to market mega-doses of the compound. Five years from now, resveratrol may come in a chewable shaped like Fred Flintstone and be as common in kitchen cabinets as vitamin C. However, at the moment, large supplemental doses of resveratrol have not been adequately studied for the potential negative effects of long-term use.
More importantly, where’s the cultural and culinary romanticism in popping a pill? I think it’s important to remember that while scientists tinker away in their labs, some of the best evidence we have about the efficacy of small doses of resveratrol goes back to what started this whole thing in the first place: the fact that wine-drinking cultures like the French and Italians continue to eat massive amounts of unhealthy food loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol, but still manage to outlive us Americans. That’s really all the evidence I need to justify my nightly glass of red, regardless of whatever self-serving, booze-addled experiments-of-debauchery these crazy drunken scientists are cooking up next.
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