In a 1991 segment of “60 Minutes,” CBS correspondent Morley Safer asked how it was possible for the French to enjoy high-fat foods and still have lower rates of heart disease than Americans.
“The answer to the riddle, the explanation of the paradox, may lie in this attractive glass,” Safer said, raising a glass of red wine toward the spectators.
Doctors believed wine had “a flushing effect” that prevented clot-forming cells from sticking to artery walls.Safer explained. This, according to a French researcher who participated in the segment, could reduce the risk of blockage and therefore the risk of heart attack.
At the time, several studies had supported this idea, recalled Tim Stockwell, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. And researchers were finding that the Mediterranean diet, which traditionally encouraged red wine with meals, was a heart-healthy eating habit, he added.
The idea of red wine as a healthy drink became very popular.
The possibility that a glass or two of red wine could benefit the heart was “a lovely idea” that the researchers “embraced,” Stockwell said. He fits with the broader body of evidence in the 1990s linking alcoholic beverages to good health.
For example, in a 1997 study that followed 490,000 US adults for nine years, researchers found that those who reported consuming at least one alcoholic drink a day were 30 to 40 percent less likely to die from diseases. cardiovascular than those who did not drink.
By 2000, hundreds of studies had reached similar conclusions, Stockwell said. But some researchers had been pointing to problems with these types of studies since the 1980s.
Perhaps moderate drinkers were healthier than nondrinkers because they were more likely to be more educated, wealthy and physically active, they said. Or perhaps it was because many “non-drinkers” in the studies were actually former drinkers who had given up alcohol due to health problems, they added.
Kaye Middleton Fillmore, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, was among those calling for greater scrutiny of the research. In 2001, she convinced Stockwell and others to help her reanalyze the studies.
In their new analysis, the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption had disappeared. His findings, published in 2006, dominated the news. Since then, more studies have confirmed that alcohol is not the healthy drink it was once believed to be.
In 2022, researchers report more serious news: Alcoholic beverages may increase the risk of heart problems, said Leslie Cho, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
And alcohol's links to cancer are clear, as the World Health Organization has noted since 1988.
Red wine contains compounds called polyphenols, some of which may have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. However, no study has definitively linked the amounts obtained from red wine to good health, Cho concluded.
By: ALICE CALLAHAN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7143286, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-03-06 02:48:03
#Wine #drink #helps #reduce #risk #suffering #heart #attack #professionals