Everyone believes a little wine is good for the heart. Red wine contains resveratrol, a substance that may help protect the lining of blood vessels by increasing HDL cholesterol and reducing LDL cholesterol which contributes to blood clots. Most of the research done on resveratrol, however, has been done on animals, so the jury is still out if the same protective effect could occur in humans.
A study done in the Czech Republic has shed new light on the wine controversy. Two groups of people were given moderate amounts of either red wine or white wine and instructed to drink the wine no more than five times a week for one year. Each participant kept a journal recording a number of health factors in addition to their wine intake. After one year the researchers found no difference between the red and white wine when it came to protecting against heart disease.
The study did find something very interesting, however. In people who exercised at least twice a week and drank either type of wine, their HDL cholesterol went up and their LDL cholesterol went down. This is a definite sign that the combination of wine and exercise does protect the heart, but wine alone does not. The researchers speculated that the ethyl alcohol in the wine plus exercise is the combination that was necessary to lower the risk for heart disease.
