ARE THERE POTENTIAL
BENEFITS OF ALCOHOL?
The Mayo Clinic in the US cautiously
endorses the claim that there are
potential health benefits to modest
alcohol consumption, including:O Reducing your risk of developing and dying
from heart disease
O Possibly reducing your risk of ischemic stroke- when the arteries to the brain become
narrowed or blocked, causing severely
reduced blood flow
O Possibly reducing your risk of diabetes
There are many possible reasons for the benefits listed
above, but it turns out that wine – and red wine in
particular – has a positive effect on gut bacteria.
Evidence f or this comes from a number of sources,
including a small study published in The American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition in 2012. The researchers recruited
10 middle-aged men and, after an alcohol-free week,
randomly allocated them to either drinking a lar ge gla ss
of red wine (270ml), red wine with the alcohol removed,
or gin (100ml) each day with their evening meal. After
20 days they s witched regimes. B y the end, each
volunteer had followed each of the three different
approaches. Throughout this experiment blood and
stool samples were taken on a regular basis.
Compared to when they were alcohol-free, when
the volunteers were drinking red wine, and to a lesser
extent de-alcoholised wine, there were significant
drops in blood pressure, in C-reactive protein (CRP- a measure of inflammation) and in their triglyceride
levels (the amount of fat circulating in the blood).
There was also a marked change in their
gut bacteria, with a
particular increase in
Bacteroidetes, the type
of bacteria associated
with slimness.
They also noticed a
significant increase in
Bifidobacteria, which
are associated with
lowering cholesterol.
PHOTOGR APHY: NICK BALLON, AL AMY WITH SPECIAL THANK S TO THE HEREFORD ARMS KENSING TON LONDONINSTANT EXPERT
34 BBC SCIENCE FOCUS MAGAZINE COLLECTION
DIET5 of wine a night works out at roughly 14 units
of alcohol a week. The wine and water were
provided free of charge and the empty bottles
collected afterwards to make sure they really
were drinking regularly.
So what happened? Well, as a red wine
drinker who struggles with their blood sugar
levels, I was delighted to read that when it
came to measurable health benefits the red
wine drinkers came out on top, with the white
wine drinkers a close second, followed by the
mineral water drinkers.
The researchers concluded that red wine
was found to be superior in improving overall
metabolic profiles, mainly by improving
the lipid profile, by increasing good (HDL)
cholesterol and apolipoprotein A1 (one of the
major constituents of HDL cholesterol), while
decreasing the ratio between total cholesterol
and HDL cholesterol.
Prof Iris Shai, principal investigator of the
trial, said that while the two types of wine
contained roughly the same amount of alcohol,
“the red wine had sevenfold higher levels of
total phenols and four- to 13-fold higher levels
of specific resveratrol group compounds than
the white wine”.
The study found that drinking 14 units of
alcohol per week did not have any negative
effects on blood pressure, liver function tests
or lead to increased fat gain – or at least effects
that were measurable. In fact, surprisingly
enough, sleep quality significantly improved
in both of the wine-drinking groups, compared
with the water-drinking group. Interestingly,
the people who got the biggest benefit (and
the only ones who saw improved blood sugar
control) were those whose livers broke down
alcohol particularly slowly, meaning the alcohol
hung around in their systems for longer. This
suggests that although red wine contains
beneficial compounds, alcohol also plays a role.
All that said, it’s only fair to point out
that this was a smallish study done for a
relatively short period of time and with a
particular group of people – type 2 diabetics.
For these reasons, the researchers were rightly
keen to emphasise that the results should
be treated with caution. It adds, however, to
what I think is compelling evidence that theResearch suggests
red wine can be
beneficial to health –
but in modest doses