Is red wine really good for your health?

For a long time, it was believed that drinking red wine in reasonable amounts was good for the body. It has been noted that, for example, people who drink a glass of red wine for dinner are less likely to have heart disease and live longer on average than those who do not drink red wine.

Additional research on this topic over the past two decades has revealed the presence of an element called resveratrol in red wine. Experiments on rodents have shown that resveratorol has an anti-inflammatory effect on their bodies, reducing the likelihood of tumors. Moreover, resveratrol increases the lifespan of some animals, such as short-lived fish. There was no doubt that this substance, entering the body together with red wine, has an extremely positive effect on humans.

But now scientists are no longer so sure about the benefits of red wine for humans. They were prompted to change their minds by a recently completed nine-year study of 783 elderly people living in two Italian towns famous for their red wine production. Every day for nine years, researchers measured the participants' levels of resveratrol in the body and compiled detailed statistics.

After nine years, 250 participants have died, 174 have been diagnosed with various heart conditions, and another 34 have been diagnosed with cancer. Comparing the level of resveratrol in healthy, sick and dead people, scientists found absolutely no signs that this element, which is the most beneficial component of red wine, in any way affects the life expectancy or the presence of the disease.

It turns out that red wine is not as healthy as previously thought, and the benefits of resveratrol for humans are greatly exaggerated. In addition, red wine contains at least 35 other substances, the effect of which on the human body needs to be studied in more detail.