Why drink red wine?
Heres one potentially very good reason:
"...Red wine polyphenols, which consisted of various powerful antioxidants such as flavonoids and stilbenes, have been implicated in cancer prevention and that promote human health without recognizable side effects. Since resveratrol, a major component of red wine polyphenols, has been studied and reviewed extensively for its chemopreventive activity to interfere with the multi-stage carcinogenesis..."
Read the full report below -- if the 'print' seems a bit small use the 'more tools' (little spanner icon) section and increase the document size so you can scroll about and read it at a better text size):
Red Wine Polyphenols for Cancer Prevention
...And here's a quote from an interesting article by Harvey Finkel featured on The Wine News website from a little while back. Indeed it may go some way to explaining why my prostate seems to be holding up well, acording to quacks (despite my years indulgence of less than healthy lifestyle habits; rich dinners, late nights, the odd cigar or three... you get the picture ;D), and why (until recently due to an infection acquired during fishing expedition from a nasty little 'critter') I hadn't even graced the doors of the Doc's surgery for some 12 years.
This is about the boron content of wine and its possible health benefits (despite actually being rather a toxic substance in larger quantities -- ask any cockroach!... As they say: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!"). Apparently a glass of wine contains about 0.5 mg of boron and some sources suggest a maximum dose of boron of about 2 to 3 mg daily is advisable to avoid the risk of toxicity (although others observe that boron intake could be quite a bit higher in some types of diet generally regarded as healthful) :
"...Zuo-Fen Zhang and associates at the UCLA School of Public Health may have found out. Using the huge data bank of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which tracks thousands of men and women, Zhang's group sought correlations between the amount of dietary boron and its beneficial or adverse health effects. They uncovered only one, but it appears dramatic. Boron protected against prostate cancer, a cancer that lies near the top of the list of deadly afflictions of older men.
According to the American Cancer Society, at 198,100 cases per year, prostate cancer is the most common of newly diagnosed cancers in the U.S. In causing 31,500 deaths annually, prostate cancer is exceeded in this country only by lung, colorectal, and breast cancers.
Among the 7,727 older men in the survey, the risk of prostate cancer fell as boron intake climbed. As reported at the Experimental Biology 2001 conference held in Orlando, Florida, in early April, the trend was strong: "Prostate cancer risk for men eating the most boron, at least 1.8 mg/day was less than a third that of men eating under 0.9 mg/day" (emphasis mine). Ample boron consumption does not protect against other cancers, nor other chronic diseases, in this study.
Zhang called the association "very specific to prostate cancer." This is the kind of exciting discovery that will stimulate plenty of further research..."
(With thanks to Mr. Finkel and TheWineNews.com. The complete article can still be found here.)
