Wine

Both Sides of the Story

By Mark Campbell 

Despite the bad press it gets amongst athletes and the medical community, recent studies show it is not as harmful as we may have thought, and could even be beneficial to overall health and sporting performance. I’m talking about wine.
Wine has been a part of society since time immemorial, but has always been an enemy to athletes. However, scientists seem to have discovered beneficial properties in the drink that until now was to be avoided at all costs but may have become a recommended part of the diet. Let’s take a look at both sides of the story.

Origins of Wine
Wine was first produced in Neolithic times, according to archaeological findings of the plant Vitus vinifera sylvestris and ceramic receptacles in the Zagros mountains, where Armenia and Iran are today. The oldest evidence of wine making and consumption is a drinking vessel from the year 5400BC, found at the site of the Neolithic settlement Hajii Firuz Tepe in the Zagros mountains. The vessel contained a reddish residue, presumably from wine.
Later, wine consumption spread to the west, reaching Anatolia and Greece, and south to Egypt. The oldest known Greek documentation on the care of vines, harvesting and pressing of grapes is contained in Hesiod’s Works and Days, from the 8^th century BC. In ancient Greece wine was consumed mixed with water and stored in goatskins.
Wine has always been well considered by high society, being an essential accompaniment to important banquets, and many historical accords have been signed in its presence. In China more than 4000 years ago the process of fermenting grapes was already known, and viticulture was understood in Egypt in the 4^th century BC. Julius Caesar was a great fan of wine, and introduced it to the entire Roman Empire.
Christian Bibles talk of Jesus’s Last Supper, where wine represented his blood. Indeed, viticulture owes a large part of its development to Christianity, as it has always been required for mass or communion and the monasteries, with their particular methods of manufacture and extraction, were the main precursors to viticulture and winemaking as we know it today.
Although winemaking has changed a lot, originally the grapes were pressed manually, by stepping on them, or mechanically using a press to extract the juice, which then fermented to produce wine. Yeast converted the sugar into alcohol until it reached a concentration of 12-14%, at which point the yeast died. As such this is the maximum alcohol content of wine, dependent on the sugar content of the grapes used.
If fermentation is stopped before all the sugar is converted to alcohol the resulting wine is sweet. In some countries wine’s that contain less than eight grams of carbohydrates per litre are labelled “dry”, and if they have less than four grams of carbohydrates per litre they are “suitable for diabetics”. At 25-45g of carbohydrates per litre they would be called “semi-dry”, and with more than 45g of carbohydrate per litre a wine would classify as “sweet”.
There are other types of beverage made by fermenting different fruits and sugars, sometimes in the presence of various plants, roots or leaves, which are also referred to as wine, such as plum wine or rice wine, but the legal definition of wine is limited to the grape-derived variety. 

Negative Effects
The negative effects of wine are related to its alcohol content and the way that can be abused. When alcohol enters the body it is assimilated very quickly, it does not sit it the stomach the way food does. Alcohol molecules are very small and do not require digestion, such that they pass directly through the walls of the stomach and can reach the brain inside a minute after consumption. Of course, if the stomach contains food already when alcohol is introduced there is less possibility of the alcohol coming into direct contact with the stomach walls, and its assimilation and arrival to the brain take longer.
The most notable effects are on the brain, as alcohol lowers nervous system activity. For centuries it was used as an anaesthetic due to its ability to dull pain. Alcohol also modifies behaviour when consumed in sufficient quantities, altering coordination and reflexes, making speech more difficult, impairing vision and in more serious cases causing unconsciousness. Ethyl alcohol poisoning can cause death.
Alcohol is eliminated from the body by the liver, although this causes significant strain and over time can lead to cirrhosis of the liver.
The ethyl alcohol in wine has psychoactive effects, for example, small to moderate doses increases the appetite and provoke a certain lack of inhibition where anxiolithic characteristics are present, wherein low doses can have a mildly hypnotic effect and help induce sleep, such as a tranquiliser. However, just like other psychoactive agents, in higher doses (more than two glasses) the signs of intoxication become evident, as alcohol depresses cerebral function. This can cause insomnia or, the reverse, deep sleep, and high doses also cause a reduction in libido.
In addition, frequent consumption of wine in high doses can cause lesions, particularly to the central nervous system and the liver, and in the latter case, as with other alcoholic drinks, this can be a factor in the development of cirrhosis or carcinomas. 

Positive Effects
So we’ve covered some of the bad things about wine, but consumed in moderation it can have numerous beneficial properties.
For example, for some time researchers have been trying to explain the “French paradox” – the fact that the French experience a low mortality rate due to heart disease even though the French diet includes a lot of saturated fat and wine; this mortality rate is, in fact, similar to other Mediterranean countries where less fat and wine is consumed. It is thought that some element of the French diet must be responsible for this, and certain studies suggest that the French are protected somewhat by the phenols in wine, olive oil and foie gras.
At the Fresno State University in California, researchers tried to explain the French paradox looking at their wine consumption. The hypothesis was that the antioxidant substances in wine, such as resveratrol, quercetin and epicatechine, reduced LDL, or bad cholesterol, and thus protected the cardiovascular system. Similarly, they found that wine and grapes contained vasorelaxants, which reduced stress on blood vessel walls and thus lowered hypertension.
The studies also showed that both red and white wine are excellent sources of salicylic acid and its metabolites, which have vasodilatory and anti-inflammatory effects. Salicylic acid is the basic component of aspirin, which for many years has been recommended by heart specialists for protecting the cardiovascular system. Red wine, however, contains more than white wine, and its red colour is also due to the presence of anthocyanines, antioxidants found in darker grape varieties.
Two plant specialists from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York identified resveratrol as the substance in wine responsible for the observed cholesterol reduction in wine drinkers. Resveratrol is the very substance that naturally protects grapes from infection by fungi that attacks the vines.
Already in 1992 Leroy Creasy and Eva Siemann published their conclusions in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture on the effects of resveratrol, after studying extensive research in China and Japan, which identified the substance as the active ingredient in some traditional medicinal herbs used for centuries in those countries to reduce the level of fatty acids in the blood.
The researchers from Cornell found that the red wine from Bordeaux contained much more resveratrol than white wine from the same area. In fact, after analysing more than 30 French wines they claimed that red contained up to 200 times more resveratrol as whites.
The difference seems due to the fact that red wine is obtained principally from grape skins, which are included during the fermentation process, whereas white wine is fermented without the skins. The area of cultivation also makes an apparent difference. For example, scientists claimed that chardonnay from the New York region contained around three times more resveratrol than chardonnay from California.
“We suspect the wines from New York contain more resveratrol because the vines are subject to greater risk of disease than those in California”, they said, “and this forces them to produce more of this substance, as it is used by the vines to combat fungal infections”.
At the Universita degli Studi di Padova in Italy, studies showed that certain types of wine contain more resveratrol than others. They also claimed that phenols increased the production of HDL, good cholesterol. And English researchers, after intensive study of the Mediterranean diet, came to the conclusion that the accumulation of arterial plaque responsible for heart disease was notably reduced as a result of this diet, fundamentally due to the red wine included.
Israeli studies came to the same conclusion about the ant-cholesterol effects of wine, which according to them is due to its high concentration of polyphenols. They performed a study on 17 volunteers divided into two groups. One group was given 400ml of red wine per day, and the other 400ml of white wine. The first group experienced a 20% reduction in blood lipid peroxidation and a reduction of bad cholesterol (LDL), while the second group showed a 34% increases in blood lipid peroxidation and a 41% increase in propensity to LDL peroxidation.
Cardiologists have known for some time that the peroxidation and oxidisation of fats and LDL cholesterol causes the hardening and clogging of the arteries that leads to heart disease and coronary attacks.
The Italian doctor Maria Elena Ferraro confirmed the discovery of the anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-plaque properties of resveratrol, but also claimed that the substance had other properties unassociated with its antioxidant capacity.
In addition, Dr Thomas O. Obisesan of the Howard University School of Medicine in Washington affirmed that small doses of wine could prevent age-related macula degeneration (AMD) with age, one of the major causes of blindness in adults over 65. He found that the lowest risk for AMD was found in people who reported drinking one glass of wine per month. At the American Geriatrics Society in Atlanta, Georgia in 1997, Obisesan presented his theory that the macula, in the centre of the retina, was responsible for sharp vision, and that damage to it by oxidisation could be prevented by the phenols in wine.
If wine offers cardiovascular protection, the same could be said of grape juice, however, wine offers superior protection because the flavonoids it contains are largely quercetin, whereas the flavonoids in grape juice are bonded with sugars and, thus, less bioavailable.
Remember, we are talking about wine, not beer or hard liquor, which contains much more alcohol, which at seven calories per gram is, like fat with nine, has almost double the calorie count of proteins and carbohydrates, which have four calories per gram.
So, moderation is the key. Keeping in mind that excess alcohol is not good for your health or physique, a glass or two of wine with meals could provide protection for your cardiovascular system and even improve muscle pump, given its vasodilatory effects.