Do You Mean Drinking Red Wine Can Actually be Good for Me?
by Derek Burreson
Red Wine Compound Resveratrol Demonstrates Significant Health Benefits
If this is music to your ears, hold on; there’s a little more you should know before throwing caution to the wind.
Drinking in moderation has been shown to yield some health benefits, while drinking too much can cause a multitude of health problems. How does red wine have health benefits? It contains polyphenols including one called resveratrol that researchers have identified as having potent antioxidant benefits that act as free radical scavengers in the body. This is the basis of the “French Paradox” which is the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet rich in saturated fats, due to their higher consumption of red wine. There are many studies being conducted on the benefits of consuming moderate amounts of red wine, but confusion still remains with researchers on whether the health benefits extend to beer, white wine or distilled spirits. Resveratrol has shown to have antioxidant and free radical scavenging properties but only vitamin C, vitamin E and beta carotene are recognized “antioxidants” by the FDA. In addition to red wine, resveratrol can be found in non-alcoholic beverages and in supplement form as well.
Red Wine Compound Resveratrol Demonstrates Significant Health Benefits
If this is music to your ears, hold on; there’s a little more you should know before throwing caution to the wind.
Drinking in moderation has been shown to yield some health benefits, while drinking too much can cause a multitude of health problems. How does red wine have health benefits? It contains polyphenols including one called resveratrol that researchers have identified as having potent antioxidant benefits that act as free radical scavengers in the body. This is the basis of the “French Paradox” which is the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet rich in saturated fats, due to their higher consumption of red wine. There are many studies being conducted on the benefits of consuming moderate amounts of red wine, but confusion still remains with researchers on whether the health benefits extend to beer, white wine or distilled spirits. Resveratrol has shown to have antioxidant and free radical scavenging properties but only vitamin C, vitamin E and beta carotene are recognized “antioxidants” by the FDA. In addition to red wine, resveratrol can be found in non-alcoholic beverages and in supplement form as well.
Well, a study by University of Michigan Kresge Hearing Research Institute reveals that I am not alone. About 10 million people in the United States suffer from noise-induced hearing loss. While they haven't found a way to reverse hearing loss, the researchers have come up with a vitamin cocktail to take before being exposed to loud noises (i.e. our troops) in an effort to prevent some of the noise-induced damage. The U-M researchers discovered that this new combination of vitamins, (A, C and E) when mixed with magnesium, can prevent noise-induced damage to the ears by blocking some of these complex cellular reactions. Their studies show that it blocked about 80% of the damage. This is a great discovery for those whose jobs or hobbies involved high volume situations. I wish I had known about this combo back in the day!
