On Wine: Don't look to ale for what ails ya'

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

A chart from Bordeaux wine merchants Dubos Frères & Cie, circa 1785, echoes much of the history of medicine when it prescribes wine for ailments including bronchitis, menopause, rheumatism and anemia. Allergies call for a glass of Médoc, while fever requires a whole bottle of champagne. (It really works - or feels that way, anyhow.)

While our doctors and government don't recommend wine, British health officials routinely do. A growing mound of studies, reflecting sources such as the American Heart Association and The New England Journal of Medicine, confirms wine to be precisely the potent and nutritious medicine our ancestors assumed it was. Besides the magic in polyphenols, which you could get from grape juice, and in alcohol, which you could get from gin, wine adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

But only in the right dose. Virtually all positive effects correlate with moderate, daily drinking. Daily is clear: Weekend binges won't cut it. Moderate is a trickier concept. America says one glass a day for women and two for men, while Britain allows twice that.

In contrast with bingers and abstainers, as well as beer and spirits drinkers, moderate daily wine drinkers (MDWDs) are better-educated and earn more. Their higher cognitive skills propel them through the Alzheimer's years with a 50 percent lower risk of dementia, one reason they're half as likely to end up in nursing homes even though they live longer, succumbing to cardiovascular diseases at half the rate of abstainers and heavy drinkers.

Since moderate daily wine raises "good" cholesterol and reduces inflammation and clotting, MDWDs recover better from heart attacks and surgery and have a lower risk of stroke. They also have a 30 percent lower rate of Type 2 diabetes.

Both red and white wine pack powerful, cancer-fighting antioxidants. Incidence of endometrial cancer is 83 percent lower in female MDWDs. Wine with meals halves your risk of colorectal cancer. Wine even eases blood-vessel constriction in smokers, while its polyphenols alleviate certain lung diseases.

MDWDs get fewer colds with lighter symptoms. Their bones are denser, and they have nicer teeth, due to wine compounds that zap gum-disease bacteria.

But wouldn't all that alcohol play havoc with your liver and kidneys? Nope. In fact, MDWDs have 30 percent lower risk of kidney dysfunction, and liver disease decreases as wine consumption rises.

MDWDs have narrower waists and half the obesity rate of bingers and abstainers. Mysteriously, adding wine to a diet appears to melt pounds. It could be antioxidants and flavanoids speeding the breakdown of fat. It couldn't hurt that red wine, at 1.37 grams per liter, provides 8.5 percent of recommended daily fiber. It might have to do with metabolism or pleasure centers, which might explain why wine also helps with anorexia.

Most of these studies are observational, not interventionist. They watch and question, but they don't put 10,000 people on two glasses of wine a day for five years while a control group drinks water. No one would fund that, and besides, Group Two might cheat.

Correlations often lead to the fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc: Are wine drinkers thinner, smarter and richer because of wine? Or do slim, bright, wealthy people choose wine? We know they exercise more and eat healthier food.

Two groups of rats were bred: One craved alcohol, the other shunned it. The boozer rats lived longer, healthier and more fertile lives than teetotalers. Strangely, this held true even if they never got a drink. Researchers conclude that the mechanism that makes us want daily wine could be responsible for health benefits that have been attributed to wine. Although we're not rats - most of us.

Nevertheless, poor, fat, unhealthy beer-swillers might consider adopting the daily wine habit. But wouldn't they be better off quitting altogether? With dire warnings all around us, and as reluctant as our doctors are to recommend alcohol, you'd think the best scenario would be if everyone just quit for good.

It would be annoying, but it would save lives, right? Some. But far more lives would be lost. Total abstinence, it's estimated, would cause an additional 135,884 deaths a year from coronary heart disease alone.

Now go drink two glasses and call me in the morning.

Recommended

White

•Bodegas Angel Rodríguez "Martínsancho" Verdejo 2002(Spain) $17

•Trefethen Dry Riesling 2005 (U.S.) $20

Red

•Altano Douro DOC Red 2003 (Portugal) $8

•Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva 2002 (Italy) $18

Jester@corkjester.com