The benefits of alcohol are all about moderation. Low to moderate drinking - especially of red wine - appears to reduce all causes of mortality, while too much drinking causes multiple organ damage. A mini-review of recent findings on red wine's polyphenols, particularly one called resveratrol, will be published in the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research; the review is also available at Early View.

In summary, current scientific research is starting to explain reports from the last 200 years that drinking red wine improves health. "It is a cliché that 'nature is a treasure trove of compounds,' but studies with resveratrol show that this is correct! We need to understand better the vast array of compounds that exist in nature, and determine their potential benefits to health."

Red wine contains a complex mixture of bioactive compounds, including flavonols, monomeric and polymeric flavan-3-ols, highly colored anthocyanins, as well as phenolic acids and the stilbene polyphenol, resveratrol. Brown said that some of these compounds, particularly resveratrol, appear to have health benefits.

The breadth of benefits is remarkable - cancer prevention, protection of the heart and brain from damage, reducing age-related diseases such as inflammation, reversing diabetes and obesity, and many more.

Resveratrol exhibits therapeutic potential for cancer chemoprevention as well as cardioprotection.

Resveratrol may aid in the prevention of age-related disorders, such as neurodegenerative diseases, inflammation, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The simplest explanation is that resveratrol turns on the cell's own survival pathways, preventing damage to individual cells, including removing very reactive oxidants in the body and improving blood supply to cells.

Low doses of resveratrol improve cell survival as a mechanism of cardio- and neuro-protection, while high doses increase cell death.

The key difference is probably the result of activation of the sirtuins in the nucleus, low activation reverses age-associated changes, while high activation increases the process of apoptosis or programmed cell death to remove cellular debris. Similar changes are seen with low-dose versus high-dose resveratrol: low-dose resveratrol produces cellular protection and reduces damage, while high-dose resveratrol prevents cancers.

Resveratrol is largely inactivated by the gut or liver before it reaches the blood stream, where it exerts its effects - whatever they may be - good, bad, or indifferent. Thus, most of the reseveratrol in imbibed red wine does not reach the circulation. Interestingly, absorption via the mucous membanes in the mouth can result in up to around 100 times the blood levels, if done slowly rather than simply gulping it down.

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