Wine or Exercise?

Tough choice! We love anything that makes us better that we can do from the comfort of our couch. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA discovered more benefits from wine drinking. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) for March 2010 has two featured articles. The big news yesterday morning was wine makes it possible to not gain weight more than no wine. The second was that exercise will help your heart. (See the YouTube video from the JAMA below) Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah!

We'd rather drink than sweat. Moderation is the key so we say chocolate and wine during meals for better health if you're gaining weight! Of course don't hold us to it because it's our very liberal way of interpreting the data. What research has actually shown is:.

"The researchers found that compared with lifelong abstainers, women who consumed 0.1 to 4.9 grams of alcohol per day (less than one beer) had a 20 percent reduction in risk for developing type 2 diabetes; women who drank 5.0 to 14.9 grams of alcohol per day (about one beer) had a 33 percent risk reduction; women who drank 15.0 to 29.9 grams of alcohol per day (about one to two beers) had a 58 percent risk reduction, and those who drank 30 or more grams of alcohol per day (about two to three beers) had a 22 percent risk reduction." - American Medical Association (AMA) 

"The researchers found that the inverse association with light to moderate drinking and reduction in risk of developing type 2 diabetes was most apparent in women who reported drinking beer or wine. However, women who reported drinking 30 grams or more of liquor per day had a significantly increased risk (about two and one half times higher) of diabetes compared to those who did not drink. In this cohort of mainly premenopausal women, a nonlinear relationship was seen between alcohol consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus," write the authors. "We found a linear inverse association up to levels of 29.9 grams per day, beyond which risk increased compared with light and moderate drinkers. Despite the consistent association between light to moderate drinking and lower risk of diabetes mellitus, the potential harmful effects of drinking on other aspects of health outcome need to be considered," the researchers write." - American Medical Association (AMA)

Which is good if you don't have diabetes and if anyone asks you can always say that you're protecting yourself against type 2. Twenty-nine grams (29) is a social way of drinking. Take one and make it last or finish it and its time to leave, if you can't resist another. Then when you get home you can have another glass or two.

"Low to moderate intake of wine is associated with lower mortality from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease and other causes. Similar intake of spirits implied an increased risk, while beer drinking did not affect mortality." - (6051 men and 7234 women aged 30-70 years) - Mortality associated with moderate intakes of wine, beer, or spirits - British Medical Journal (BMJ), May 1995

Now that's science. When we looked for the earliest healthy wine research guess what we found out from Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) from April 1933 we could only get this little bit of information from the archives:

"Certain American newspapers1 have recently featured special foreign correspondence alleging that French physicians, "following the well known practice at Vichy, are prescribing more and more the moderate drinking of wine instead of milk for patients suffering from gastric or intestinal troubles." It is further reported that "one of the eminent physicians who are leading the antimilk campaign in favor of wine" regards it as a duty to inform the public about the physiologic advantages of wine. These statements, which have been widely circulated at a moment when the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment is being discussed in every home, are already promoting numerous inquiries to physicians." - Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) April 1933.

Seventy-seven (77) years later we have to ask the question, as the American Dairy Association (ADA) wants us to get more milk, whose healthier the French or Americans? The answer according to Forbes magazine from April 2008 is the United States which was the eleventh (11th) most health country in the world and France is the fifteenth (15th) most health country in the world. The year before Forbes released their healthiest country was Forbes magazines' fattest nations.

Forbes also ranked the US as the ninth (9th) most overweight as compared to France one hundred twenty eighth (128th) fattest nation. Ethiopia is the next to last in obesity at one hundred and ninety three (193rd) out of a possible one hundred and ninety four (194th) nations, Feb 2007. So we can be fat, happy and healthy unless you don't consider fat healthy and clearly Forbes magazine does. If however you like health on the thin side then the wine might make you consider the French as thinner, happier (because of the wine) and therefore healthier. The World Health Organization (WHO) certainly considers the French less obese, overweight and healthier. We think its mostly the wine.