Re: Red Wine Scam?

From: Dr_Dickie (Dr_Dickie_at_chembench.com)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 08:26:55 -0500

"Laurie" <no@spam.com> wrote in message
news:4241d44c$1_1@alt.athenanews.com...
>
> "TC" <tunderbar@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1111597471.390956.185320@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Now I am sure that a bit of alcohol in one form or another can have
> > some small positive effect on our physiology ...
> How about a quote from a physiology text to that effect??
> Strange, PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
> comes up empty on a search for [alcohol "positve effect on physiology"]
>
> > My recomendations is to eat copious amounts of healthy fats from
> > healthy animals ...
> So, you are willfully ignoring the fact that we are frugivorous,
> tropical apes, and are making believe, due to your cultural conditioning
> that you never examined, that our species is 'omnivorous', and that
cooking
> is somehow beneficial??
>
> > And, of course, enjoy a few sips of wine or other low-sugar alcoholic
> > beverage. Everything in moderation, including moderation.
> So, you recommend consuming a drug that results in more human misery
> than any other, this, in the name of "health"?
>
> > Avoiding refined carbs ...
> Alcohos(s) can be thought of as refined carbs.
>
> Laurie

The mediterranean lecture: wine and thrombosis--from epidemiology to
physiology and back.

de Gaetano G, Di Castelnuovo A, Donati MB, Iacoviello L.

Research Laboratories, Center for High Technology Research and Education in
Biomedical Sciences, Catholic University Campobasso, Italy.
gdegaetano@rm.unicatt.it

The protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption on the risk of
cardiovascular disease has been consistently shown in many epidemiological
studies. Antiatherogenic alterations in plasma lipoproteins, particularly
increase in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol,are considered as the
most plausible mechanism of the protective effect of alcohol consumption on
coronary artery disease (CHD). Other potential mechanisms contributing to
the cardio-protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption include
anti-thrombotic down regulation of blood platelet function, as well as of
the coagulation and fibrinolysis balance. Since the proposal of a "French
paradox" in the early Nineties, the possibility that consuming alcohol in
the form of wine might confer a protection against CHD above that expected
from its alcohol content, has made the topic"wine and health" increasingly
popular. Many epidemiological studies have explored such a possibility, by
comparing specific alcoholic beverage types (wine,beer, liqueur) in respect
to their relative capacity to reduce the risk of CHD. In parallel,
experimental studies have been done, in which wine and wine-derived products
have been tested for their capacity to interfere with molecular and cellular
mechanisms relevant to the pathogenesis of CHD. Wine might indeed
conceivably have other ethanol unrelated beneficial effects. The biological
rationale for such a hypothesis has been linked to the enrichment in
grape-derived, non-alcoholic components, that possibly make it peculiar in
respect to other alcoholic beverages. In fact, while the mechanisms
underlying the effects of alcohol on cardiovascular disease have been
limited to lipid metabolism and the haemostatic system, those related to
wine consumption have also been extended to specific anti-inflammatory,
antioxidant and nitric oxide related vaso-relaxant properties of its
polyphenolic constituents. The effect of wine consumption has been carefully
investigated to account for potential confounding of several conditions
(inappropriate use of abstainers as control population, correlation between
wine or total alcohol consumption and markers of healthy lifestyle and
socioeconomic factors, diet, etc.). Strong evidence indicates that moderate
wine consumption rather than confounders reduces both fatal and non fatal
CHD events. In spite of the fact that the healthy effect of moderate intake
of wine is by now well accepted, important issues remain to be resolved
about the relationship between wine, alcohol and alcoholic beverages, the
(possibly different) optimal amount of alcohol intake in men and women, the
individual or environmental modulation of the alcohol related effect and the
pattern of drinking. Some of these issues have been recently addressed in a
large meta-analysis, in which the relationship between wine or beer
consumption and CHD risk was quantitatively evaluated. We shall summarize
here the experimental and epidemiological studies with wine or wine-derived
products aimed at finding biological explanations for the supposed superior
cardio-protective effects of wine consumption and to discuss some open
questions about wine and vascular disease as approached in epidemiological
studies.

Publication Types:
  a.. Review

PMID: 15692262 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

      N Engl J Med. 2005 Jan 20;352(3):245-53. Related Articles, Links

Comment in:
  a.. N Engl J Med. 2005 Jan 20;352(3):289-90.

Effects of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive function in women.

Stampfer MJ, Kang JH, Chen J, Cherry R, Grodstein F.

Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.

BACKGROUND: The adverse effects of excess alcohol intake on cognitive
function are well established, but the effect of moderate consumption is
uncertain. METHODS: Between 1995 and 2001, we evaluated cognitive function
in 12,480 participants in the Nurses' Health Study who were 70 to 81 years
old, with follow-up assessments in 11,102 two years later. The level of
alcohol consumption was ascertained regularly beginning in 1980. We
calculated multivariate-adjusted mean cognitive scores and
multivariate-adjusted risks of cognitive impairment (defined as the lowest
10 percent of the scores) and a substantial decline in cognitive function
over time (defined as a change that was in the worst 10 percent of the
distribution of the decline). We also stratified analyses according to the
apolipoprotein E genotype in a subgroup of women. RESULTS: After
multivariate adjustment, moderate drinkers (those who consumed less than
15.0 g of alcohol per day [about one drink]) had better mean cognitive
scores than nondrinkers. Among moderate drinkers, as compared with
nondrinkers, the relative risk of impairment was 0.77 on our test of general
cognition (95 percent confidence interval, 0.67 to 0.88) and 0.81 on the
basis of a global cognitive score combining the results of all tests (95
percent confidence interval, 0.70 to 0.93). The results for cognitive
decline were similar; for example, on our test of general cognition, the
relative risk of a substantial decline in performance over a two-year period
was 0.85 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.74 to 0.98) among moderate
drinkers, as compared with nondrinkers. There were no significant
associations between higher levels of drinking (15.0 to 30.0 g per day) and
the risk of cognitive impairment or decline. There were no significant
differences in risks according to the beverage (e.g., wine or beer) and no
interaction with the apolipoprotein E genotype. CONCLUSIONS: Our data
suggest that in women, up to one drink per day does not impair cognitive
function and may actually decrease the risk of cognitive decline. Copyright
2005 Massachusetts Medical Society.

PMID: 15659724 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

      Obes Res. 2004 Sep;12(9):1375-85. Related Articles, Links

Alcohol consumption and metabolic syndrome: does the type of beverage
matter?

Djousse L, Arnett DK, Eckfeldt JH, Province MA, Singer MR, Ellison RC.

Boston University School of Medicine, Room B-612, 715 Albany Street, Boston,
Massachusetts 02118, USA. ldjousse@bu.edu.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the association between total and beverage-specific
alcohol consumption and the prevalence odds of metabolic syndrome (MS).
RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Using a cross-sectional design, we studied
4510 white participants of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Family Heart Study. We used generalized estimating equations adjusting for
age, education, risk group, smoking, physical activity, diabetes mellitus,
coronary heart disease, energy intake, energy from fat, fruits, and
vegetables, dietary cholesterol, dietary fiber, and use of multivitamins to
estimate the prevalence odds of MS by alcohol intake. RESULTS: Compared with
never-drinkers, multivariate odds ratios (95% confidence interval) for MS
were 1.12 (0.85 to 1.49), 0.68 (0.36 to 1.28), 0.72 (0.50 to 1.03), 0.66
(0.44 to 0.99), and 0.80 (0.55 to 1.16) among men who were former drinkers
and who were current drinkers of 0.1 to 2.5, 2.6 to 12.0, 12.1 to 24.0, and
>24.0 g/d of alcohol, respectively (p for linear trend 0.018). Corresponding
values for women were 0.86 (0.69 to 1.09), 0.80 (0.43 to 1.34), 0.47 (0.33
to 0.66), 0.47 (0.30 to 0.74), and 0.39 (0.21 to 0.74), respectively (p for
trend < 0.0001). The reduced prevalence odds of MS was observed across all
beverage types: compared with never-drinkers, multivariate adjusted odds
ratios (95% confidence interval) of MS were 0.32 (0.14 to 0.73), 0.42 (0.23
to 0.77), 0.57 (0.30 to 1.09), and 0.56 (0.36 to 0.88) for subjects who
consumed >7 drinks/wk of wine only, beer only, spirits only, and more than
one type of beverage, respectively. DISCUSSION: Our data indicate that
alcohol consumption is associated with a lower prevalence of MS irrespective
of the type of beverage consumed. Prospective studies are needed to confirm
these findings and to assess the influence of drinking patterns on the
alcohol-MS association.

PMID: 15483202 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Here's a few you missed. I didn't even search arressively. 

-- 
Dr. Dickie
Skepticult member in good standing #394-00596-438
Poking kooks with a pointy stick.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' ('I found it!'), but rather 'hmm....that's funny...'"
- Isaac Asimov