Wine and Health: D2H Red Wine Benefit for Heart

The antioxidants found in red wine could be used to treat people with heart disease that include angina, heart attacks, congenital disease and strokes.  Tammy Dugas, a professor from the Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine, believes she may have found a way to use the antioxidants found in red wine to help people who are suffering from heart disease. 

As has become almost like a statutory warning for all such studies, she isn’t advising people to drink more red wine in order to treat heart disease, but only that incorporating the antioxidants found in red wine into a coronary angioplasty procedure could prove beneficial for those suffering from the heart disease.. 

This isn’t the only recent instance of scientists applauding the benefits of alcohol. Another new study written by the University of Rochester Medical Centre states that drinking small amounts of alcohol can boost brain’s ability to remove waste, thus providing it with an efficient, clean system.

New Design of Stents           

A coronary angioplasty is a procedure in which blocked or narrowed coronary arteries are widened. Surgeons do this by inserting and inflating a small balloon into the artery, which frequently involves inserting a stent into the blood vessel. Dr Dugas says that commercial stents can often cause the artery to shrink again afterwards. That’s why she’s working on a new type of stent that doesn’t prove harmful in the long run.

She is currently in the process of developing a new stent that releases two antioxidant compounds that are found in red wine into the blood: resveratrol and quercetin. Doing so will promote healing, prevent further blood clotting and reduce inflammation. “We take out the equation of alcohol consumption all together, and we try to benefit patients by delivering it locally at the site of a blockage.” Dugas developed a stent that can be inserted into arteries that releases antioxidants directly into problem areas.

“By delivering red wine antioxidants during conventional angioplasty, it may be possible to prevent excess tissue from building up and the blood vessel from narrowing again as it heals,” Dr Dugas explained.

For those looking to get the heart health benefits without a stent, or a buzz, resveratrol and quercetin supplements are available. What may be challenged by the quercetin tablet producers, Dugas says, ‘you’ll have to chew a lot of tablets to get the same benefits’. The table producers have generally claimed in the past that one must consume frightfully large amount of red wine to get equivalent benefits.

“It’s believed that if we just take the polyphenols out and administer as a supplement that you actually have to take quite a bit to get the same benefit you get from a very moderate dose of red wine,” she says.

Dugas says the red wine health studies began when researchers noticed an interesting phenomenon in the wine country. In what came to be known as The French Paradox in 1991 during the TV Programme ‘60 Minutes’, ‘Residents of certain areas in South France were at a lower risk of heart disease despite their diet, and so it was believed that their red wine consumption was a part of the benefit,’ says Prof. Dugas.

Source: Independent

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Subhash Arora

It is interesting that she, and many before her, have recommend having two glasses of wine a day to start noticing the heart health benefits. DelWine recommends maximum of 2 glasses of wine for male adults a day and single glass for women, because of biological reasons..

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