A glass of wine every night halves the risk of suffering heart attacks and strokes according to a study carried out while drinking a bottle a week could be as beneficial as taking statins to control your cholesterol
The study from the University of Barcelona found that Light and moderate consumption of wine is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular complications
The study, published in the European Heart Journal, is based on the analysis of a biomarker of wine intake — specifically, tartaric acid, present in grapes. It was carried out in 1,232 participants in the PREDIMED project, a major scientific epidemiological study in nutrition on the effects of the Mediterranean diet on cardiovascular health.
Today, there is much controversy about the health effects of moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages in general and wine in particular.
Ramon Estruch one of the authors of the report stresses that “part of this debate is due to conflicting results of studies that have pointed to a protective effect of wine, while others have found no such effect”.
These differences could be explained by possible errors in wine consumption records.
“Epidemiological studies assessing the role of wine in the rate of cardiovascular events are often based on self-reported information on wine consumption. These are reliable data, but subject to measurement errors due to inaccurate recall or biased perceptions about the social desirability of drinking alcoholic beverages”, he explains.
In response to this problem, the researchers in this study measured wine consumption by means of food intake frequency surveys, which they confirmed with an objective biomarker: the concentration found in urine of tartaric acid, a molecule produced mainly in grapes and rarely synthesized by other plant species.
