An article in ScienceDaily for July 3, 2008 reported on red wine and meat.
In the study, Joseph Kanner and colleagues point out that scientists attribute wine's health benefits, including protection against cancer and heart disease, to its high levels of polyphenols, powerful antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables. However, the body does not absorb polyphenols easily, and scientists have been puzzled about how and where these substances exert their beneficial effects.
This study, conducted and supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, is a follow-up to 2006 findings that resveratrol improves health and longevity of overweight, aged mice. The report confirms previous results suggesting the compound, found naturally in foods like grapes and nuts, may mimic, in mice, some of the effects of dietary or calorie restriction, the most effective and reproducible way found to date to alleviate age-associated disease in mammals.The World Science article is here.
ScienceDaily for July 2, 2008 reported on minimum ages for drinking and driving.
One of the most comprehensive studies on the minimum drinking age shows that laws aimed at preventing consumption of alcohol by those under 21 have significantly reduced drinking-related fatal car crashes.
New research by U-M economist Joel Slemrod of the Ross School of Business and colleague Michael Lovenheim of Stanford University shows that 18- and 19-year-old drivers who live in another state—but within 25 miles of a state with a lower drinking age—are more likely to be involved in a fatal crash.
The researchers found an answer in tests with laboratory rats fed either red meat or red meat with red wine concentrate. Wine concentrate substantially reduced formation of two byproducts of fat digestion, malondialdehyde and hydroperoxide, which are toxic to cells, the investigators said.
ScienceDaily for June 28, 2008 reported on reasons why youth binge drink.
A study conducted at Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study and Volterra Consulting UK shows that social networking is a key factor in the spread of the rapid consumption of large amounts of alcohol -- binge drinking - which is blamed for serious anti-social and criminal behaviour.
ScienceDaily for June 25, 2008 reported on the effect of a mother's drinking to the ability of her children to choose pleasant odors.
How children respond to the smell of alcoholic beverages is related to their mothers' reasons for drinking, according to a new study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center. When asked to choose between the odor of beer and an unpleasant odor, children of mothers classified as 'Escape drinkers' were more likely than children of Non-escape drinkers to choose the unpleasant odor.
ScienceDaily for June 23, 2008 reported on the effect of alcohol on insulin receptors.
Too much alcohol can cause permanent brain damage, such as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which is largely related to thiamine deficiency. Previous animal studies have shown that alcohol can also cause brain injury and degeneration by inhibiting insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF). A new study using postmortem human brain tissue has found that chronic alcohol abuse can decrease levels of genes needed for brain cells to respond to insulin/IGF, leading to neurodegeneration similar to that caused by Type 2 diabetes mellitus.
An article in ScienceDaily for June 8, 2008 reported on health benefits of grapes.
Do you need to drink red wine in order to get the potentially beneficial compounds found in grapes that act as antioxidants? Apparently not, according to a new chemical report in the June 4th Web edition of the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry, published by the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
ScienceDaily for April 17, 2008 reported on the effect off red wine and obesity.
Resveratrol, a compound present in grapes and red wine, reduces the number of fat cells and may one day be used to treat or prevent obesity, according to a new study.
An article for June 12, 2008 in ScienceDaily reported on the effect of tobacco, body weight, and alcohol on hearing loss.
In contrast, moderate alcohol consumption (at least one drink a week) was seen to have a protective effect. In the study, one alcoholic drink was defined as one glass of wine, spirit or beer. The effect of heavy drinking was not investigated
ScienceDaily, in an article dated June 9, 2008, reported on effects of alcohol on our Pancreas.
However, only recently has progress been made in understanding how excessive alcohol consumption causes damage to the pancreas, and new insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying pancreatic damage in mice following alcohol exposure has now been provided by Herbert Gaisano and colleagues at the University of Toronto and University Health Network, Canada.
ScienceDaily for June 8, 2008 reported on the effect of advertising and drinking by youth.
The advertising of alcohol, the marketing of alcoholic products, peer pressure and parental influence all play a part in the level of alcohol consumption among young people.
The answer to the so-called "French paradox" may be found in red wine. More specifically, it may reside in small doses of resveratrol, a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates, red wine and other foods, according to a new study by an international team of researchers.
A surprising effect from drinking alcohol on Rheumatoid Arthritis was reported by ScienceDaily for June 5, 2008.
The Scandinavian researchers base their findings on more than 2750 people taking part in two separate studies, which assessed environmental and genetic risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis.
ScienceDaily for June 2, 2008 reported on an effect of drinking at an early age.
An early age at onset of drinking (AOD) is a strong predictor of subsequent alcohol dependence (AD). Following through on previous research that found substantial increases in drinking and AD among women born between 1944 - 1983, compared to women born between 1934 - 1943, this study examined the influence of AOD. Results showed that women born after 1944 also began drinking earlier than their predecessors, which might help to explain their higher rates of AD.
ScienceDaily for June 2k 2008 reported that
Not all university students will "mature out" of their heavy-drinking habits. A new study examines the density of college students' family history of alcoholism. This type of measure -- looking at first-, second- and third-degree relatives -- identified a significant number of at-risk individuals who would have been missed using regular family-history measures.
An article in LiveScience for May 23, 2008 reported on the feffect of alcohol on bone development.
"Our study adds to the literature that suggests that moderate alcohol use is beneficial for many diseases," said study author Dr. Karina Berg, an assistant professor of medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Berg added that the study also found that "bone mineral density increased as alcohol consumption increased from abstinence up to about two drinks a day."
However, she said this study isn't a reason for people to start drinking if they don't already do so, and having more than two drinks a day can actually harm your bone health.
“Because this effect was only seen with wine, not in beer or liquor, further studies will be needed to determine whether the benefits seen were due to the alcohol or non-alcohol components of wine,” added Schwimmer.
LiveScience for May 21, 2008 reported on a link between drinking beer and/or smoking and pancreatic cancer.
Heavy smoking and drinking, especially beer, may hasten the onset of pancreatic cancer, according to researchers who presented their data Tuesday at the Digestive Disease Week 2008 conference in San Diego.
ScienceDaily for May 14, 2008 reported on the increase in assaults as alcohol sales increase.
The researchers identified 3,212 people aged over 13 years who had been hospitalized over a 32-month period because of a serious assault. They compared the volume of alcohol sold at the liquor store nearest to the victim's home the day before the assault with the volume sold at the same store a week earlier (this type of study is called a "case-crossover" study).
