The Truth About Red Wine – The positives and negatives

Have you ever heard someone say that drinking a glass of red wine is the equivalent to spending an hour at the gym? If that were the case, I don’t think anyone would workout anymore.

Moderate drinking of red wine is widely considered to have great health benefits to help us avoid certain diseases and live longer. For reference, “moderate drinking” is one glass per day for women and two glasses per day for men. Red wine is believed to have heart health benefits due to its antioxidants which are said to help prevent coronary artery disease – the condition that leads to heart attacks. There is also evidence suggesting that a polyphenol found in red wine called resveratrol prevents damage to blood vessels, reduces low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) and prevents blood clots.

Let’s dig deeper to find out if a glass (or two) of red wine a day should be a part of your health routine or if sticking to the gym is a better option.

 

Proclaimed Health Benefits of Red Wine

Here is a breakdown of what some studies have shown to be the health benefits of moderately drinking red wine:

• It contains antioxidants, which help to fight cancer.
• The tannins found in red wine contain resveratrol, which can help prevent cardiovascular disease.
•  That same phenol, resveratrol, can also help to lower your cholesterol and blood pressure.
• It increases bone density and reduces your chance of osteoporosis because of its high levels of silicon.
• It is a natural blood thinner, which helps to prevent blood clots and stroke.
• Its resveratrol can help reduce insulin resistance, which then lowers the risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
• It helps prevent the brain’s neurons from dying off, which improves cognitive function and can also help prevent Alzheimer’s Disease.
• It helps fight obesity and weight gain because of a compound found in grapes called piceatannol, which blocks an immature fat cells’ ability to develop and grow.

Seems pretty good, right? Well, not so fast…

 

Negative Effects of Alcohol on the Body

Red wine consumption may have some health benefits, but drinking too much of any kind of alcohol can have dire effects on your health. Aside from the obvious consequence of alcoholism, these are some of the negative consequences of alcohol consumption:

• Too much alcohol can damage your heart, leading to cardiomyopathy (a condition that makes it hard for the heart to deliver blood to the body and can lead to heart failure), arrhythmias (improper beating of the heart), stroke and high blood pressure.
• Excessive alcohol also takes a toll on your liver, causing steatosis (fatty liver), alcoholic hepatitis (liver inflammation), fibrosis and cirrhosis (chronic liver damage leading to scarring and liver failure).
• Drinking too much alcohol can also weaken your immune system, making you an easy target for a multitude of diseases, such as infections, pneumonia and tuberculosis.
• Alcohol in any amount causes the pancreas to produce toxic substances that can eventually lead to pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).
• Alcohol also interferes with the brain’s communication pathways, which can change your mood and behavior as well as make it harder to think clearly and move with coordination.
• Finally, there has been extensive research to prove that there is a link between alcohol consumption and several types of cancer, including head and neck cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer.

 

The Verdict

While there have been many studies done to test the health benefits of red wine, the effects of alcohol on heart health have never been tested in a long-term, randomized trial, so there’s actually no hard evidence to support its health benefits. Even though there was compelling research done on mice to prove the correlation between resveratrol and improved heart health, there has been no evidence of any benefit for humans who take resveratrol supplements. Not to mention you would have to drink hundreds of glasses of red wine daily to get an amount of resveratrol that is equivalent to the doses that improved the health of mice. Plus, grapes and berries are a better source of resveratrol than red wine, so it is much better to try to eat your resveratrol than to drink it.

And researchers still haven’t figured out whether red wine is better for your health than any other form of alcohol.

If you are already a light-to-moderate alcohol drinker, it is okay to continue with the same habit, but do not start drinking or increase your regular alcohol consumption in hopes of improving your health – and skipping the gym.