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Should we all be drinking wine?


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I think both Huberman and Attia have rather strong biases on some topics, but I listen to both as both offer a lot of good information too.

In the case of alcohol, I have gone from being a cheerleader for moderate (mostly red wine) drinking to personally reducing my wine intake to practically zero, or about a glass a month lately.

A large part of the reason has to do with the increased accuracy of the trackers I wear and the data is there -- even a single glass affects my sleep, my RHR, HRV and my stress level. It's consistent. I have stopped eating desserts for similar reasons, as my data shows similar effects after eating a couple of slices of cake. It affect my sleep similarly but to a lesser extent than wine or any other alcohol. And this is just with my Garmin, the two CGMs I wore just confirmed that while my sentience loves cake, my body doesn't.

Once one separates from one's strong biases the scientific evidence is right there and it starts making sense.

Same for olive oil, but that seems to get people more riled up than even wine. 😄

Kombucha cheers!

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Hi Ron!

Possibly, alcohol nutritionally may resemble "sugar on steroids".  If your body isn't used to sugar, it might have a harder time handling alcohol.

I drink red wine twice weekly -- once on Friday evenings, and once on Saturdays with lunch.  Each drink consists of about 1/2 teaspoon of dry red wine. 

Drinking more has negative effects on my not-used-to-sugar body.

  --  Saul

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920262/

In this study nuns were used from a convent so that they would all be eating the same diet and living the same lifestyles etc. they found that 400 ml of red wine daily changed longevity indicators in a positive way. This was done with blood samples. 
As for HUBERMAN I listened to his idiotic podcast wherein he totally ignores any research on REAL WORLD EFFECTS and babbles on and on about physiological effects. Towards the end of the podcast he talks about hormesis but claims alcohol can’t have any. Then he goes on about cold showers which is certainly a hormetic effect and tells you to be careful cause overdoing it can cause a heart attack. So IOWS the hormetic effect and physiology of cold showers and I’ll add saunas as well as exercise etc. etc. those terrible sounding physiological effects are ok but wrt alcohol they are not ok. And of course RED WINE is in its own category here in any case as a purveyor of alchohol and yet he never mentions the multitude of research that supports its use in moderation with meals.

 

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2 hours ago, Ron Put said:

Same for olive oil, but that seems to get people more riled up than even wine. 😄

Probably what riles people, at least what riles myself is the generalization. I can say nothing about your individual reactions to specific foods and drinks, as per neurological feedback or measured physiological parameters.

But you are Ron and I am Mccoy, probably different from Saul and Dean. Individual variability seems to be a very significant parameter in biology.

The sample upon which the effects of a specific food are studied is usually made up of many individuals, the more the better. the results are, or should the be exposed in terms of a random variable, with the most frequent outcome, the average outcome, the rarer outcomes, the extreme values and possibly the outliers.

 

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Just now, Mike41 said:

In this study nuns were used from a convent so that they would all be eating the same diet and living the same lifestyles etc. they found that 400 ml of red wine daily changed longevity indicators in a positive way. This was done with blood samples. 

400 ml is not a trivial amount, especially so for nuns (women, probably not accustomed to alcohol). It amounts to more than 2 drinks per day. I'm curious to read the article.

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2 hours ago, Ron Put said:

I think both Huberman and Attia have rather strong biases on some topics, but I listen to both as both offer a lot of good information too.

In the case of alcohol, I have gone from being a cheerleader for moderate (mostly red wine) drinking to personally reducing my wine intake to practically zero, or about a glass a month lately.

A large part of the reason has to do with the increased accuracy of the trackers I wear and the data is there -- even a single glass affects my sleep, my RHR, HRV and my stress level. It's consistent. I have stopped eating desserts for similar reasons, as my data shows similar effects after eating a couple of slices of cake. It affect my sleep similarly but to a lesser extent than wine or any other alcohol. And this is just with my Garmin, the two CGMs I wore just confirmed that while my sentience loves cake, my body doesn't.

Once one separates from one's strong biases the scientific evidence is right there and it starts making sense.

Same for olive oil, but that seems to get people more riled up than even wine. 😄

Kombucha cheers!

It’s true alcohol several hours prior to bedtime is a bad idea. Years ago I switched to drinking my moderate dose with dinner at 5 and it has had zero effect on my sleep. It needs to be metabolized 

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17 minutes ago, mccoy said:

400 ml is not a trivial amount, especially so for nuns (women, probably not accustomed to alcohol). It amounts to more than 2 drinks per day. I'm curious to read the article.

It was 200 ml for lunch and 200 ml for dinner. That’s almost 14 oz! Much too high for woman who metabolize alchohol less efficiently than men, but it was a short study and they just wanted to see if longevity factors were changed so it makes sense

Edited by Mike41
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Here Luigi Fontana reports on the effect of red wine consumption. He agrees with the organizations recent analysis. The research has always had a problem wrt alcohol and that is what defines a non drinker in alcohol observational studies. IAC I am still drinking my 5 oz. I’m not convinced either way, but I will say science on this is loopy. There are numerous studies that were controlled and red wine certainly exhibits positive effects wrt many factors. 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6165230/

The above demonstrates numerous benefits in controlled studies of humans. My bet is moderation with a meal and stick to red wine.

Edited by Mike41
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I listened to Fontana's video, he too seems to play the role of the absolute party-pooper, but we know that he's a reliable source.

One benefit of alcohol which almost nobody cites is its benefit to digestion. Many times one quarter of a glass of red wine has eliminated some nausea or improved my digestion. 

What am I going to do personally? I'm going to regard alcohol as a bone thrown to the dog. The dog is the part of our mind which likes some sense gratification, such as a piece of chocolate, a cookie, a small slice of cake. 

I'm going to drink only very good red wine, which abounds in my whereabouts, cutting the amounts to a bare minimum, not every day.

Instead of wine, I've already started to drink pure blueberry juice, which in my place is as costly as a good wine (not the most costly one, but pretty high-level ).

 

 

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On 8/28/2022 at 1:32 PM, mccoy said:

What am I going to do personally? I'm going to regard alcohol as a bone thrown to the dog. The dog is the part of our mind which likes some sense gratification, such as a piece of chocolate, a cookie, a small slice of cake. 

Haha, we all need some gratification. But I have tried to cut out alcohol and deserts, and the longer I lest between lapsing, the less it feel like gratification.

I haven't had cake in about two and a half month, basically since the CGM confirmed what I was seeing in the data from my watch. My body does not like cake. Nor alcohol.


It has become much easier not to succumb to peer pressure at dinners, especially since where I live manyr estaurantss have started serving kombucha (and charging sometimes as much as a glass of wine), so the beer-looking drink in front of me makes it easy for me and everyone to forget that I am a "party-pooper."

I travel a fair bit and nowadays AirBnB makes it far easier for me to prepare my "weird" plant-based whole food rather than have to eat at restaurants. Half of my suitcase is filled with baggies of stuff like amla, nattokinase and nutritional yeast 😄

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On 8/28/2022 at 7:32 AM, mccoy said:

I listened to Fontana's video, he too seems to play the role of the absolute party-pooper, but we know that he's a reliable source.

One benefit of alcohol which almost nobody cites is its benefit to digestion. Many times one quarter of a glass of red wine has eliminated some nausea or improved my digestion. 

What am I going to do personally? I'm going to regard alcohol as a bone thrown to the dog. The dog is the part of our mind which likes some sense gratification, such as a piece of chocolate, a cookie, a small slice of cake. 

I'm going to drink only very good red wine, which abounds in my whereabouts, cutting the amounts to a bare minimum, not every day.

Instead of wine, I've already started to drink pure blueberry juice, which in my place is as costly as a good wine (not the most costly one, but pretty high-level ).

 

 

BTW Valter Longo has 5 glasses of wine a week.

https://www.valterlongo.com/healthy-diet-and-weight-not-smoking-and-regular-exercise-are-associated-with-a-12-14-years-longer-lifespan-and-an-over-65-reduction-in-the-risk-of-mortality-from-cancer-and-cardiovascular-disease/

Edited by Mike41
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6 hours ago, Mike41 said:

BTW Valter Longo has 5 glasses of wine a week.

Good observation, we can safely say that Longo and Fontana have equal eminence, so it's a 50% split opinion, a toss of the coin, maximum entropy, no information at all, we decide and gamble on a personal basis with equal confidence on a negative or on a positive output.

The above of course assuming that there are some benefits to drinking red wine, as some evidence would suggest.

Edited by mccoy
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On 8/30/2022 at 5:29 AM, mccoy said:

Good observation, we can safely say that Longo and Fontana have equal eminence, so it's a 50% split opinion, a toss of the coin, maximum entropy, no information at all, we decide and gamble on a personal basis with equal confidence on a negative or on a positive output.

The above of course assuming that there are some benefits to drinking red wine, as some evidence would suggest.

Longlo freely admits that he doesn't follow everything he preaches as optimal, if I recall.

As to red wine, the asian populations that live the longest generally do not drink any red wine, so I'd take some of the longevity benefits claims with a grain of salt. We all grasp at straws to justify even our bad habits 🙂

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22 hours ago, Ron Put said:

Longlo freely admits that he doesn't follow everything he preaches as optimal, if I recall.

As to red wine, the asian populations that live the longest generally do not drink any red wine, so I'd take some of the longevity benefits claims with a grain of salt. We all grasp at straws to justify even our bad habits 🙂

Correct, but as the blue zone researchers note there is a strong genetic factor at work. Asians do not generally process alcohol as well as Europeans especially southern ones. This could be an important confounder in the research. As I say the poison is in the dose and how it’s taken with or without food. 

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  • 6 months later...
On 3/3/2023 at 5:08 AM, Mike41 said:

ust published a review explaining the power of red wine

Based on what I have read, if there is any benefit it is mostly due to the alcohol, not to any magic in red wine specifically, no matter what the industry and the exporters, or studies they fund, claim. This would at least make some sense based on population studies. I get the hormesis idea, but like with cold exposure, on balance things may not be so clear. Alcohol appears to increase inflammation, and my understanding is the less inflammation triggers, the better.

I am not sure if this has been posted before:

Risk thresholds for alcohol consumption: combined analysis of individual-participant data for 599 912 current drinkers in 83 prospective studies

In the 599 912 current drinkers included in the analysis, we recorded 40 310 deaths and 39 018 incident cardiovascular disease events during 5·4 million person-years of follow-up. For all-cause mortality, we recorded a positive and curvilinear association with the level of alcohol consumption, with the minimum mortality risk around or below 100 g per week. Alcohol consumption was roughly linearly associated with a higher risk of stroke (HR per 100 g per week higher consumption 1·14, 95% CI, 1·10–1·17), coronary disease excluding myocardial infarction (1·06, 1·00–1·11), heart failure (1·09, 1·03–1·15), fatal hypertensive disease (1·24, 1·15–1·33); and fatal aortic aneurysm (1·15, 1·03–1·28). By contrast, increased alcohol consumption was log-linearly associated with a lower risk of myocardial infarction (HR 0·94, 0·91–0·97). In comparison to those who reported drinking >0–≤100 g per week, those who reported drinking >100–≤200 g per week, >200–≤350 g per week, or >350 g per week had lower life expectancy at age 40 years of approximately 6 months, 1–2 years, or 4–5 years, respectively.

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  • 7 months later...

Very interesting article, although all the results have been obtained in vitro, whereas we would prefer some in vivo replicas.

Strangely, the authors do not mention the presence of Acutissimin-A, a powerful anticarcinogenetic compound found in red wine aged in oak barrels, which was cited in this forum a few years ago.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261561423001620
 

 

The major food sources of polyphenols associated with a lower risk of all-cause or CVD mortality were red wine, cooked spinach, lettuce, olive oils (common and extra virgin), green olives, and coffee, which was the main contributor of methoxyphenols, alkylmethoxyphenols, and hydroxycinnamic acids intake.

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53 minutes ago, mccoy said:

Very interesting article, although all the results have been obtained in vitro, whereas we would prefer some in vivo replicas.

Strangely, the authors do not mention the presence of Acutissimin-A, a powerful anticarcinogenetic compound found in red wine aged in oak barrels, which was cited in this forum a few years ago.

No it did not. personally I drink Robert Mondavi oak barrel wine Cabernet Sauvignon. 
 

For what it’s worth Mondavi died at 94. His son now runs the winery

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RED WINE IN MODERATION HAS NO NEGATIVE EFFECTS!!!
UNLIKE OTHER FORMS OF ALCOHOL 
https://assets.cureus.com/uploads/review_article/pdf/191941/20231010-27025-131s294.pdf


This review is not intended to encourage red wine consumption for health outcomes but rather to avoid discouraging moderate red wine consumption based on misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the red wine data due to the reporting of pooled data across all types of alcohol

 

From this systematic review of the literature, there is no evidence of an association between moderate red wine consumption and negative health outcomes. Across the various outcomes assessed, a beneficial effect of moderate red wine consumption was consistently seen for mortality and dementia, along with certain cancers (e.g., non-Hodgkin lymphoma) and cardiovascular conditions (e.g., metabolic syndrome). For other health outcomes, the association was neutral, i.e., neither harmful nor beneficial.

As my Italian Grandma insisted Wine is the best medicine. She died at 98. Drank it every day.

Ron Putt are you reading this?

Edited by Mike41
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On 3/9/2023 at 12:47 AM, Ron Put said:

Based on what I have read, if there is any benefit it is mostly due to the alcohol, not to any magic in red wine specifically, no matter what the industry and the exporters, or studies they fund, claim. This would at least make some sense based on population studies. I get the hormesis idea, but like with cold exposure, on balance things may not be so clear. Alcohol appears to increase inflammation, and my understanding is the less inflammation triggers, the better.

I am not sure if this has been posted before:

Risk thresholds for alcohol consumption: combined analysis of individual-participant data for 599 912 current drinkers in 83 prospective studies

In the 599 912 current drinkers included in the analysis, we recorded 40 310 deaths and 39 018 incident cardiovascular disease events during 5·4 million person-years of follow-up. For all-cause mortality, we recorded a positive and curvilinear association with the level of alcohol consumption, with the minimum mortality risk around or below 100 g per week. Alcohol consumption was roughly linearly associated with a higher risk of stroke (HR per 100 g per week higher consumption 1·14, 95% CI, 1·10–1·17), coronary disease excluding myocardial infarction (1·06, 1·00–1·11), heart failure (1·09, 1·03–1·15), fatal hypertensive disease (1·24, 1·15–1·33); and fatal aortic aneurysm (1·15, 1·03–1·28). By contrast, increased alcohol consumption was log-linearly associated with a lower risk of myocardial infarction (HR 0·94, 0·91–0·97). In comparison to those who reported drinking >0–≤100 g per week, those who reported drinking >100–≤200 g per week, >200–≤350 g per week, or >350 g per week had lower life expectancy at age 40 years of approximately 6 months, 1–2 years, or 4–5 years, respectively.

Ron see articles just posted

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Maybe I don't understand the things right but the probability of the molecules in such studies to ever get in proximity (not to guarantee the interaction reported) to a cancer cell in the body is in negligible parts of a percent. The simple check is - anticancer cocktails and solid tumors - the whole decades of real world experience gained by clinicians (described by Sid Mukherjee in a great popsci book on cancer). Usually the active component is being used in several orders of magnitudes comparing to anyhow reachable from food sources and at the close to the fatal doses to have _some_ effect.

So such studies are useful (no idea if efficient) from the perspective of new molecules search but from the dietary perspective they seems exist just to drive the sales process strategically.

Maybe I am wrong with this but I am just thinking about it intuitively, I would be happy to see somebody describing the things more quantitatively.

Br,

Igor

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On 10/20/2023 at 1:39 AM, IgorF said:

Maybe I don't understand the things right but the probability of the molecules in such studies to ever get in proximity (not to guarantee the interaction reported) to a cancer cell in the body is in negligible parts of a percent. The simple check is - anticancer cocktails and solid tumors - the whole decades of real world experience gained by clinicians (described by Sid Mukherjee in a great popsci book on cancer). Usually the active component is being used in several orders of magnitudes comparing to anyhow reachable from food sources and at the close to the fatal doses to have _some_ effect.

So such studies are useful (no idea if efficient) from the perspective of new molecules search but from the dietary perspective they seems exist just to drive the sales process strategically.

Maybe I am wrong with this but I am just thinking about it intuitively, I would be happy to see somebody describing the things more quantitatively.

Br,

Igor

Well the evidence strongly suggest only beneficial effects from moderate red wine consumption. The detrimental effects of other alcoholic drinks are not seen with red wine. Red wine cannot be lumped in with beer and spirits. It has complexity that inhibits and in fact enhances the alcoholic content. Key is of course moderate consumption 

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