Incredible facts
The French paradox — the observation that, despite being very fatty, French people are less susceptible to heart disease — debuted in 1991. This is allegedly due to the regular consumption of red wine. After this fact became common knowledge and was released on a TV show, red wine sales in the US alone soared by 44 percent. These are the conclusions reached by French researcher Serge Renaud.
However, a lot has changed since 1991.
Renaud presented the results of his research to the scientific community in 1992 by publishing an article in the Lancet. In his opinion, red wine prevents the appearance of deadly blood clots on the walls of the arteries. Epidemiological studies, according to Reno, have shown that moderate consumption of red wine can reduce the risk of developing coronary heart disease by at least 40 percent.
Other studies came to similar conclusions, but they were all similar, as they all focused on studying the drinking habits of different groups of people. Despite attempts to control external variables (for example, weight and smoking) that could affect the final results, researchers could not be sure that the risk of development was reduced heart disease is related to wine consumption.
Perhaps people who are at lower risk of developing heart disease simply prefer moderate alcohol consumption. Or maybe there is something else that explains whether or not there is a link between moderate drinking and a reduced risk of developing coronary disease.
The last assumption came in 2010, when French scientists published a study in the journal Nature that studied the drinking habits of 149,773 people. They found that moderate wine consumption is due to a number of factors that reduce the risk of developing heart disease: lower levels of “bad” cholesterol and high levels of “good” cholesterol cholesterol, lower blood pressure, low levels of obesity, etc.
But, as the authors of the study found, wine alone is not responsible for all these factors.
They came to the conclusion that people who consumed alcohol in moderation have a higher social status and are better off than those who either do not drink at all or abuse alcohol. This suggests, as researchers have written, that moderate drinking is something healthy that people do, but it is not what makes people healthy.
The study does not disprove the link between wine consumption and heart health. According to a 2008 experiment published in the scientific journal Cell Metabolism, resveratrol (a compound found in red wine) increases life expectancy in mice. But it is not known whether this may be applicable to humans, but it has been experimentally confirmed that resveratrol fights obesity.
However, the best strategy for having a good and healthy heart should not be measuring the amount of wine you drink, but focusing on healthy eating, exercise and social interactions.