Red wine

Red wine and alcohol: Are we being hoodwinked?

For many years, scientists have been extolling red wine for its alleged benefits to heart health. Unfortuntely they've been telling us a little lie, founded on poor logic.

Not every compound in wine is healthy for us. Only some of the compounds are beneficial, and those are the ones which science has been studying. Little attention is paid to the more harmful ones whose effects outweight the benefits of the healthy compounds.

Let's use an analogy. Sewage or effluent contains the compound water. It also contains other chemicals that are unhealthy for us.  We need the water, but not the yucky stuff that comes with it. 

Another study has been released telling us of the benefits of the compound resveratrol, which is found in red wine, peanuts, and red grapes. And in the above press release, a medical doctor implies that because red wine contains resveratrol, red wine is automatically good for humans. Yet why does he forget about all the other harmful effects of alcohol?

This is a clear error in logic of our scientists. The quantities of resveratrol found in a liter of wine are very small. But, you may say, what about all those studies which say red wine is healthy because it's been part of the diet of mediterraneans and people in other countries for many years? 

Here's my answer: You cannot take the sum of a person's life and attribute their lifespan or health to just one action (such as drinking wine) because our health is affected by many interrelated factors. When you read the discussion part of a scientific paper, the authors usually say something along these lines, yet the media leaves that message out, and tells everyone a half-truth, and not the whole message.

Just because a group of people drink red wine and live a little longer than people who don't drink red wine doesn't mean that red wine is the cause of their extended life.

Just so you know that I'm not making up the deleterious effects of the other compounds in red and white wine, as well as other alcoholic beverages, here are some views and references on alcohol's effects on the body from other professionals in the health industry:

• "Alcohol causes increased gut permeability."{Dr. Leo Galland, American Academy of Environmental Medicine. In WMAGW newsletter, Nov./Dec. 1995}
• "The leaky gut syndrome: a hyper-permeable intestinal lining, where large spaces develop between the cells of the gut wall and bacteria, toxins, and foods leak in. This results in production of antibodies against what was harmless food. To remove the cause, people need to stay off NSAIDS, caffeine and alcohol. Alcohol irritates the gut and the gut lining." {Sherry Rogers, MD, specialist in environmental medicine and nutritional biochemistry in Syracuse, N.Y., April 1995, Let’s Live Magazine}
• "Alcohol, caffeine and tobacco need to be avoided because they irritate the digestive tract." {“Natural Remedies for IBS,” Prevention magazine, Aug. 2000}
• Anything that continuously irritates the intestines, including alcohol and caffeine, can cause "leaky gut." {"Digestion Problems," Women's Health Letter, Nan Katherine Fuchs, PhD, Feb. 2002}

• "Alcoholic beverages with a low alcohol content, such as wine or beer, strongly increase gastric acid. Alcohol can also interfere with the workings of the muscles surrounding the stomach and change the time it takes for food to move through it. This may lead to enough time for bacteria to start to work on the food, and for gases which are produced during this time, to lead to stomach pains. Also alcohol slows down the breakdown of food into usable chemicals by lowering the amount of digestive enzymes released from the pancreas." {alcoholresearch.lsumc.edu, Aug. 2002}

If you need more information then read more here and here. Learn more about Leaky Gut Syndrome and how it erodes your health. As your health erodes, you increase your likelihood of needing a doctor or pharmaceutical intervention at some point. Have we been hoodwinked?