The Benefits of Adding Red Wine to Your Diet

Are you trying to cut down on your risk of heart disease? If so, a little red wine added to your diet may be just what the Doctor ordered. There are many known health benefits, which can be gained from adding a little red wine to your diet.

Recent research has shown that the moderate consumption of red wine has been shown to be beneficial in the reduction of cardiovascular disease. The main ingredient in red wine, which gives it the ability to reduce heart disease is called resveratrol, and it is mostly found in the skin of grapes.

Grapes, and some types of plants need the ingredient Resveratrol, to protect it from fungal infections. Resveratrol has also been found to have a lot of additional properties as well including antioxidant, anticoagulant, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer effects.

Scientists have also observed that Resveratrol has a molecular structure similar to that of diethylstilbestrol, a type of synthetic estrogen. After this fact was recognized, it prompted a group of Scientists to investigate whether resveratrol might have any pharmacological properties similar to those found in estradiol, which is the natural estrogen found in the human body. Scientists have also noted that in some cases resveratrol can be used instead of estradiol in the general support and proliferation of certain breast cancer cells, which require estrogen for growth.

The moderate consumption of wine has also been shown to provide a significant reduction in cholesterol levels, and resveratrol has been identified as one of the main ingredients in the wine, which is responsible for this effect.

The phenomenon was first noticed when scientists began to notice a much lower rate of heart disease in French men and women, even though their diets were normally higher in fat than those of people who lived on a standard American diet. The discrepancy was finally credited to the fact that the French were regular consumers of red wine. This paradox was later termed the "French Paradox."

Red wine has also been shown to be beneficial to the cells in the body, because it reduces the risk of humans developing several types of cancers, such as leukemia, skin, breast, and prostate cancers. Scientists have also begun to study resveratrol in an effort to learn more about its cancer preventive activities. Most recently, evidence from animal studies have suggested that the ingredients found in red wine also have anti-inflammatory properties, and are effective cancer preventative agents in the 3 main stages of the cancer process: initiation, promotion, and progression.

Recent studies about the association between red wine consumption and cancer in humans are in their initial stages. Keep in mind that the consumption of large amounts of alcoholic beverages may increase the risk of cancers in some cases, even though there is growing evidence that the health benefits of red wine are related to its nonalcoholic components.