Information about the alcohol and health article review and resource, Alcohol Reduces Heart Attack Damage, Alcohol Helps Brain Cognition, Alcohol Reduces Heart Attack Damage, Drug and Alcohol Review

Wine and Health

Most people appreciate wine for its delicious and complex taste. There are countless different types of wine, each pairing mouthwateringly well with certain combinations of food. This immense variety means, if you had enough money, you could live a lifetime without drinking the same wine twice. But how does wine affect your health?

As the Washington Post reported, a label approved by the BATF gives some indication that wine can be a healthful drink. According to them on Feb 6, 1999, 'One label, approved yesterday by federal regulators, makes this suggestion: "The proud people who made this wine encourage you to consult your family doctor about the health effects of wine consumption."'

How does one drink wine healthfully? First off, wine, like any other item ingested, should be taken in moderation. Just like eating 8 pounds of chocolate a day is unhealthy, and 15 bags of potato chips for lunch will give bad results, so would drinking 8 bottles of wine a day. Wine, like anything else overdone, can harm your body in large quantities. The key is moderation.

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The Wine Alcohol Meter

This is a very simple way to check the alcohol content of your wine but remember - it is very approximate and you need to know how it works to avoid the common pitfalls.

• It works on (still) wine only, not beer or spirit.
• It will only work if there is no CO2 left.
• It will only work if wine is 8-13% or so.

The wine alcohol meter uses the capillary effect in the liquid to determine the alcohol. This will only work on "normal" strength wines. Unfortunately most meters are graduated between 0-25% but the error outside 8-13% is too large, it simply doesn't work there.

Trick: If you have a very strong wine, dilute it with equal amount of water, then take a reading. If reading ends up inside the interval 8-13% you know you can trust it and in reality it is twice as high.

The best way of using it is actually to dilute your wine and take readings until you get approximately 10%. Then determine the strength from your dilution factor.

It is very important that you have no CO2 left. The carbon dioxide changes the surface tension of the liquid and you will get a completely wrong value. A simple method if you have a still unstable wine is to take a small sample, shake out all CO2, pour it on a saucer and leave it in the fridge overnight. This will usually stabilise it and get rid of most CO2. Another method is to boil sample in the microwave for one minute, then add back water to make up for the loss during boiling. This is a bit difficult though so for household use the fridge method is best.

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The World's Most Prominent Wine-Specific Study

The Copenhagen Heart Study

As the scientific debate continues, research investigations in Europe, and specifically Denmark, point to a number of wine-specific findings that are somewhat different from those found in the U.S. The Copenhagen City Heart Study lead by Dr. Morten Gronbaek looks at several disease outcomes and beverage choice based on data from the Danish government's Institute for Preventive Medicine.

Within the last decade, published data from the Danish cohort associates moderate alcohol consumption with several favorable health outcomes and reports specifically on wine and a reduced risk of all cause mortality. The landmark Copenhagen City Heart Study was published in 1995 in the British Medical Journal, concluding, "Low to moderate intake of wine is associated with lower mortality from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease and other causes."

The results showed that the risk of dying steadily decreased with moderate wine consumption, reducing chance of death from CHD by up to 50% and other causes of death between 20% and 50% compared to abstinence. In 2000, Gronbaek and colleagues confirmed these earlier findings, explaining that wine intake may have a beneficial effect on all cause mortality that is "additive to that of alcohol."

Since 1995, Gronbaek and colleagues have published various scientific findings, indicating a reduced likelihood of hip fracture, lung cancer, upper digestive tract cancers, and certain types of stroke, ulcers, liver cirrhosis and dementia. The latter represents the most recently published 2002 study results finding some protection against dementia for wine drinkers. The researchers state, "Monthly and weekly intake of wine, ....is associated with a lower risk of dementia." (Please review the box on page 80 for a historical perspective on the key study conclusions.)

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Alcohol Reduces Heart Attack Damage

Drinking alcohol (beer, wine, or distilled spirits) in moderation not only reduces the risk of heart attack but also reduces the damage to effected tissue following a heart attack. This is the finding of research conducted by Dr. Ron Korthuis, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of Missouri- Columbia.

When a heart attack occurs, blood flow is reduced to several areas of the body. When the blood flow is restored, white blood cells stick to the walls of the arteries and release toxins into the damaged tissues, which causes additional cell death and more damage. However, alcohol triggers a chemical reaction in the body that makes the artery walls slick and stops the white blood cells from attaching to the damaged tissue. In subjects treated with alcohol, the tissue effected by the low blood flow was found to be much healthier and stronger than in those without alcohol...

Alcohol Helps Brain Cognition

A study of 1,018 men and women age 65-79 whose physical and mental health was monitored for an average of 23 years found that “drinking no alcohol, or too much, increases risk of cognitive impairment,” in the words of the editor of the British Medical Journal, which published the study.

These results are consistent with other research demonstrating that light to moderate drinking has a protective effect on the brain compared to abstention and heavy drinking.

Only that minority of the population who are carriers of the apolipoprotein e4 allele gene had an increased risk of dementia with frequent alcohol consumption...

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Alcohol's damaging effects on the brain

Difficulty walking, blurred vision, slurred speech, slowed reaction times, impaired memory: Clearly, alcohol affects the brain. Some of these impairments are detectable after only one or two drinks and quickly resolve when drinking stops. On the other hand, a person who drinks heavily over a long period of time may have brain deficits that persist well after he or she achieves sobriety. Exactly how alcohol affects the brain and the likelihood of reversing the impact of heavy drinking on the brain remain hot topics in alcohol research today.

We do know that heavy drinking may have extensive and far–reaching effects on the brain, ranging from simple “slips” in memory to permanent and debilitating conditions that require lifetime custodial care. And even moderate drinking leads to short–term impairment, as shown by extensive research on the impact of drinking on driving.

A number of factors influence how and to what extent alcohol affects the brain (1), including

• how much and how often a person drinks;
• the age at which he or she first began drinking, and how long he or she has been drinking;
• the person’s age, level of education, gender, genetic background, and family history of alcoholism;
• whether he or she is at risk as a result of prenatal alcohol exposure; and his or her general health status.

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Drug and Alcohol Review

Drug and Alcohol Review is an international meeting ground for the views, expertise and experience of all those involved in the study of treatment of alcohol, tobacco and drug problems.

Contributors to the Journal examine and report on alcohol and drug abuse from a wide range of clinical, biomedical, psychological and sociological standpoints. Drug and Alcohol Review particularly encourages the submission of papers which have a harm reducation perspective. However, all philosophies will find a place in the Journal: the principal criterion for publication of papers is their quality.

Drug and Alcohol Review is published on behalf of the Australian Professional Society on Alcohol and Other Drugs (APSAD). Members of the Society receive the Journal as part of their annual subscription. Please contact the Society for details www.apsad.org.au.

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