The positive health effects of red wine and white wine

Red wine help preserve or restore mental functions of elderly persons

Some research results suggest that a glass and a half of red wine each day can help to make degenerative diseases of the nervous system stay away, or delay and ammeliorate the development of such ailments. Especially the effect from red wine upon the chance of getting Alzheimer and Parkinson's has been investigated. It also seems that grapes contain substances with the same effect.

A rapport in the British journal New Scientist, written by Italian scientists, tells that a natural chemical substance concentrated in both grapes and wine makes the action of the enzyme MAP kinase seven-fold more effective. Mapkinase is acting during growth and regeneration of nerve cells.

Alberto Bertelli and his team at Milan University said they had tested the chemical - called - reservatrol - on human neural nerves and found it made the cells grow small extensions through which they could connect with neighboring cells. According to the team, the process can be replicated in people by drinking a glass and a half of wine a day.

Reservatrol stimulates the growth of new nerve cell extensions. The new extensions make new contact points with each other. These new extensions and contacts replace extansions and contacts the cells have lost, or extensions and contacts of cells that have entirely disapeared. Thus functions that have been lost or damaged are mended or restored.

It is this reconstruction which reactivates the ability of the elderly to remember. By daily reinforcing the production contacts, we can prevent neuro degeneration,” he added.


Red wine can help to prevent heart disease

Moderate drinking of alcohol, and especially red wine can help to prevent coronary heart disease. Moderate dirnking is up to two servings a day for men and one serving a day for women For wine one serving is one wine glass.

This is confimed by many studies, but especially by alsrge study made by the French scientist Serge Renaud who showed the world that wine is good for the heart.

There is are some suggestion that the compound quercetin may be responsible for the reduced levels of coronary artery disease found among moderate wine consumers. A study led by the Professor of biochemisdtry at the University of Berkeley in California, Terance Leighton, has shown this effect of quercitine.


Wine helps maintain a healthy colesterole level and balance of HDL and LDL lipoproteins

Regular consume of wine lowers the level of fat in the blood steram, lowers the level of cholesterole and increases the ratio of high density lipoproteins (HDL) to low density lipoproteins (LDL). Liåpoproteins are a combination of protein and fat or cholesterole. Fat and cholesterole are carried in the blood as a part of such combinations. When the amouunt of HDL is higher than the amount of LDL, the incidence of heart disease is lowered.

The favorable effects of consuming wine as part of a meal receive further support from a new study that analyzed how wine with dinner affected the composition of lipids (fats) in the bloodstream. A. Van Tol and colleagues at Erasmus University in Rotterdam report in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation that wine consumption with dinner compared with mineral water conferred a positive influence on triglyceride, total cholesterol and beneficial HDL-cholesterol that remained detectable until early the next morning. Their findings are based on 11 days of controlled diet and blood analysis on eight healthy male volunteers ages 45 -55.

Can wine fight cancer?

Up to two glasses of red wine can probably protect against cancer. Drinking more than this amount, however, have the opposite effect and increases the risk of canceer.

One of nature’s most potent cancer-fighting compounds, quercetin, has been isolated in red wine, but also in onion and garlic. Also another compound, trans-reserevatrol or Res, has this effect by means of another action, namely reducing the tendency for inflammatory reactions.

Research shows that quercetin has the ability to block the action of the human oncogene (cancer gene) known as H-RAS and keep it from converting normal cells into cancerous ones.

The study led by the Professor of biochemisdtry at the University of Berkeley in California, Terance Leighton, has shown also this this effect of quercetin.

Quercetin is inactive as found in food, but is activated into its cancer-fighting form by fermentation or by bacteria in the human intestinal tract.

Also epidemiological studies have linked high consumption of foods containing quercetin with lower incidences of stomach, intestine and other cancers.

In a study conducted by researchers at Cornell University, the potential for wine to prevent cancer was been demonstrated in laboratory mice. The investigators were studying the ability of ethyl carbamate (also known as urethane) to cause cancer. Since ethyl carbamate is present in trace amounts in some wines, they administered this substance to animals in several ways: in water, in plain alcohol, in white wine and in red wine.

The animals receiving the ethyl carbamate in water and in alcohol had higher levels of cancer than the control animals. Those receiving it in white wine actually had lower levels of cancer than the controls. Those receiving it in red wine had the lowest levels of all.

Yet another study suggests wine in moderation can be good for your health. The French study published showed that polyphenols, micronutrients abundant in wine, curbed the proliferation of cancerous cells grown in a petri dishes.

Professor Jean-Francois Rossi presented the results of the year-long study—headed by Bernard Klein at Montpellier University Hospital— during a general assembly of the Mediterranean wine, food and health institute.

Rossi’s team studied the effect of tannin polyphenols—coming from grape skin and oak wine tubs—on spinal cord cancer cell colonies, an example of a “solid” tumor.

“We found on the one hand that the polyphenols decreased the proliferation of cancerous cells,” Rossi said.

“And on the other, that they had the effect of inducing apoptosis— meaning they facilitate the suicide of the cancer cells.”


Wine helps to fight dangerous bacteria ingested by the food

Wine’s reputation as a mealtime beverage with positive health attributes received anew boost from a study recently published in the British Medical journal. Researchers led by Dr. Martin Weisse of West Virginia University report that both red and white wine efficiently wipe out bacteria responsible for most illnesses caused by food.

While the study is preliminary, done in petri dishes rather than on humans, the results are dramatic. About ten million colony-forming units of shigella, salmonella, and E coli bacteria were added to red wine, white wine, bismuth saticylate and solutions of pure alcohol and tequila. Wine was three to four times as effective as bismuth salicylate, the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol, in eradicating the bacteria, the researchers report. The tequila and alcohol were even less effective.

Research is especially active now on the phenolic compounds front. At least half a dozen studies have just been published providing further evidence of the beneficial antioxidant properties of wine phenolics.


Effects of red wine against rheumatism and other inflammatory diseases

Red wine has shown to contain anti-inflammatory substances. Such substances will directly help to prevent or ammeliorate inflammatory diseases like rheumatism and certain intestinal inflammations.

Such substances also help to revent and treat heart and circulatiry ailments and cancer, because a inflammatory process often occur before the manifestation of these ilnesses.

Studies continue to associate moderate consumption of wine and alcohol with lower risk of inflammatory disease conditions such as arthritis and diminished bone density.

Red wine contains a substance known as trans-Resveratrol or Res, wich has with anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer effects.

The effect of Res has already been shown, in a University of Illinois study in 1998.

A study by a team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has investigated this effect further.

Trans-reseveratrol or RES controls the activity of a protein, which in turn is able to turn certain genes inside a cell nucleus on and off like a switch.

The researchers, looking at cells taken from humans and rats, were able to observe how Res modulates the activity of NF-kappa B, a protein that attaches to DNA inside cell nuclei and activates and deactivates genes.

It appears that Res helps to deactivate a natural protective mechanism that prevents cancer cells from being killed, as they should be.

The anti-inflammatory properties of Resvertarol also affect the genetic process involved in the development of arteriosclerosis, an abnormal thickening of the walls of the arteries.

In addition to being found in red grapes, Res is found in a variety of fruit and nuts, including mulberries, raspberries and peanuts, the study noted.

The nutritional biologist Minnie Holmes-McNary is one of the authors of the study.The study appears in the journal Cancer Research. "This is very exciting work because we believe it explains how diet modulates changes at the molecular level,” said Holmes-McNary.


Two to three glasses of wine a day reduces death rates from all causes by up to 30 percent.

Many of the protecting actions from red wine and wine in general against many diseases were confirmed during a large study made by the french scientist Serge Renauud.

Serge Renaud found that wine not only protects against heart disease but also against most cancers.

Renaud’s studied 34,000 middle-aged men living in eastern France. His supports what has become known as “the French paradox”: Frenchmen that eat lots of saturated fat still live a long time. Results were the same for smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers, and there were no differences between drinkers having office jobs and working class employees occupied in production plants, workshops and other practical jobs. Recent studies in the United States found that a drink of almost any alcoholic beverage can lower death rates by reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Renaud, however, maintains that wine also acts against other heart ailments and cancers because of the anti-oxidant action of polyphenol compounds in wines and grapes.

Wine is a more diluted form of alcohol, which is important to the body, and if taken moderately at mealtimes it is easily absorbed. After four glasses a day, however, wine has an adverse effect on death rates. Although it still protects the heart, excess drinking raises the danger of cancers and liver disease. Renaud set off a California wine boom in 1991 when he outlined his French-paradox theory in an interview on the CBS television news magazine “60 Minutes.”

The findings of the 70-years-old researcher started a huge controversy. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms challenged him to show numbers. Actually he had already provided the statistical figures in a 1992 article in the medical journal Lancet. There he reported that 20-30 grams daily of alcohol can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by at least 40 percent.

Alcohol protects the heart mainly by acting on platelets in the blood to prevent clotting, he found. Subsequent studies elsewhere supported these findings. In the Epidemiology article, Renaud reported a 30 percent reduction in death rates from all causes from 2-3 glasses of wine a day, a 35 percent reduction from cardiovascular disease, and an 18-24 percent reduction from cancer.

“Wine is good for you,” says Renaud. Renaud, a cardiologist, works with the prestigious INSERM unit at the University of Bordeaux. His book, “Healthy Diet,” is popular in France. “Growing up around Bordeaux, you know instinctively that wine is good for you,” Renaud said. “My grandparents, their friends, all lived to be 80 or 90. I knew there was some special reason. During the 1970s, he began to work quietly to research the subject at the INSP,RM unit in Lyon. He is a strong advocate of the Mediterranean diet, based heavily on wheat, olive oil and vegetables, with more fish than red meat. And, of course, Renaud adds, a healthy amount of wine. Renaud laments a steady drop in wine consumption among many Frenchmen, who these days take less time for meals and relaxation.

“The Italians still drink a lot of wine,” he said. “Maybe after time we will have to call it `the Italian paradox’.