Forbes Innovation Healthcare Four Reasons Red Wine Is No Longer A Health Food Jesse Pines Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Expert in healthcare innovation and wellness. Following Apr 2, 2024, 02:53pm EDT Share to
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Twitter Share to Linkedin Red wine used to be touted as a health food. If you didn't drink, experts thought adding a glass ... [+] would improve your health. Yet the science has changed because the original research in the 1990s supporting red wine's benefits was flawed. Despite that, many still thinking red wine is healthy. Getty Images For years scientists and doctors considered red wine a health food. Research of the day linked moderate alcohol consumption—defined as one drink or less a day in
Women and two or less in men—to 30-40% fewer heart disease deaths in drinkers v. non-drinkers. Red wine became a health food because it not only contained alcohol but also the health-enhancing antioxidants of grape skins. One powerful antioxidant is resveratrol which repairs damaged blood vessels, prevents clots, and reduces inflammation. This led to experts to recommend red wine in modest amounts to boost health. Wine sales have grown tremendously since the 1990s. Now we know differently. Moderate drinkers do die later but not because they drink alcohol. It’s because they are healthier to begin with. They are more active, richer, have better diets, and better education. The early research studies misled us to wrongly believe moderate consumption was healthy. Here are four reasons you shouldn’t think of red wine as a health food, even if you sip less than a glass a day. 1. Moderate Alcohol Consumption Is Linked To Poorer, Not Better, Cardiovascular Health A 2022 study in JAMA Network Open examined 371,463 people in the
UK and found moderate drinking was associated with a 1.3 times higher risk of high blood pressure and 1.4 times higher risk of coronary artery disease. The study was cleverly designed. It accounted for a person’s genetic predisposition to alcohol use which helps get around some limitations of earlier studies. 2. Alcohol Use Increases
cancer Risk Even With Moderate Drinking Alcohol is a known human carcinogen , according to the National Toxicology Program in the Department of Health and Human Services. Alcohol accounts for 6% of all cancers and 4% of cancer deaths amounting to 75,000 yearly cancer cases and 19,000 deaths in US. It causes cancer for many reasons. For example, it increases oxidative stress and the metabolic products from alcohol—namely acetaldehyde— damage liver DNA. It also directly injures your mouth and throat cells’ DNA. It substantially increases breast cancer risk even in moderate drinkers. Women who drink three alcoholic drinks a week have a 15% higher breast cancer risk than those who don’t drink at all. MORE FOR YOU One Of The Best Shows Ever Made Lands On
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Samsung Galaxy Watch 6, Pixel Watch 3. Sleep Quality Is Worsened By Alcohol Alcohol’s a sedative. It helps you doze off faster. Yet it negatively impacts the quality of your sleep. This is often noticeable even after a few drinks. A study of 4,098 Finnish people found that alcohol increases stress responses and worsens measures of recovery in the first three hours of sleep. Their measure of sleep quality—called the HRV-derived physiological recovery state —was 9.3% lower when people drank a small amount of alcohol, 24% worse for a moderate amount, and 39.2% worse for a large amount. Along with worsening your hangover, poor sleep makes you less alert the next day. 4. It Would Require A Deadly Amount Of Red Wine To Benefit From Its Antioxidants Red wine contains resveratrol. But it doesn’t contain enough of it to meaningfully affect your health. A study measured how much resveratrol was absorbed in the body in a cup of alcohol, as well as two other polyphenols (catechin & quercetin) which have positive health impacts. It found that blood concentrations of all three were way too low to be of any benefit. To get levels high enough, you’d have to drink a large amount—gallons, in fact. Here’s the big takeaway: the science on red wine’s benefits has evolved. Yes, it makes you feel good. But don’t think you’re drinking a health food anymore. If you’re not a drinker, don’t start. If you drink red wine, consider having less than a glass a day. What’s clear is that the more alcohol you drink—including red wine—the more you’ll increase your risk for health problems. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website . Jesse Pines Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions