Is red wine good for my heart?
People are always interested in the issue of whether in fact wine and alcohol is good for the heart or bad for the heart. And there have been recent studies looking at antioxidants in red wine that appear to have a beneficial effect on the heart, in mice, but of course many things that are good for mice don't turn out to be good for people, so evidence in mice doesn't take us very far. It's always an interesting observation. I'm sure the mice had a good time. But in fact when we look at the evidence about red wine in particular, and people and their hearts, the evidence is a little mixed as to whether red wine is good for the heart. Certainly drinking too much alcohol, including red wine, is bad for the heart. There's no question but that it affects heart muscle, that cardiomyopathies can occur where the heart muscle doesn't work well -- we actually call that an alcoholic cardiomyopathy -- so that we don't want people to start drinking red wine or other alcohol with the idea that it's beneficial. If people are already using red wine, then to restrict that to the levels in which some potential benefit to the heart has been seen -- that is, not more than two glasses of red wine a day for a man, or two drinks, not more than one glass of red wine for women -- would seem to be prudent, and certainly more research needs to be done to see if the effects that are seen on some fractions of the good cholesterol (HDL), but not on all fractions, translate into a benefit to the heart from red wine. So far, it's an observation and association, but not really a proven fact.
