MONDAY, May 20, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- If you're a wine drinker, there's cause for healthy celebration. If you're a white wine drinker, there's even more reason to raise your glass.
Wine drinking, it seems, improves lung functioning, and white wine improves it more than red wine, says a study from researchers at the University at Buffalo.
Red wine has long been the star in studies that have focused on the health benefits of alcohol. Recent research has found that a moderate intake of red wine can help ward off hardening of the arteries and even reduce the chances you'll catch the common cold.
Now, it looks like it's white wine's turn in the limelight.
In the Buffalo study, believed to be one of the first to look at white wine consumption and lung function, the researchers asked 1,555 residents of Western New York, including Erie and Niagra counties, about their lifelong drinking habits, as well as their total alcohol intake over the past 30 days.
The residents, who ranged in age from 35 to 79 but were on average almost 60, specified which types of alcoholic beverages they drank and how much. The researchers controlled for smoking, weight, education and nutritional factors to rule out any effects those might have on lung health.
Then they measured lung function via routine tests to assess how well the airways were working.
What they found was total alcohol intake didn't have an effect on how well the lungs functioned, but wine intake had a positive effect.
"The main news here is the wine," says study author Dr. Holger J. Schunemann, who was to present his findings today at The American Thoracic Society conference in Atlanta.
"White was a little better [than red]" because it protected lung function about 20 percent better, he says.
Exactly why or how the wine protects pulmonary health isn't known, but Schunemann says it may not be the alcohol. Instead, high levels of antioxidant molecules called flavonoids in the wine may be warding off cell damage.
How much wine is healthy?
Citing other studies that have found one to three glasses of wine per day may help heart health, Schunemann says his study suggests an equivalent amount may help the lungs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's dietary guidelines for Americans defines moderate drinking as one drink a day for women, two for men; a single drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.
However, another expert wonders whether wine -- white or red -- should be given all the credit.
"Is it the wine or the user's traits?" asks Dr. Arthur Klatsky, a senior consultant in cardiology at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, Calif., who began researching alcohol's effect on the heart in 1974.
Klatsky says wine drinkers, at least the ones he has studied, tend to be healthier overall.
"In California, wine drinkers are better educated, eat a better diet, exercise more and smoke less" than those who prefer other types of alcohol, he adds.
In his studies, Klatsky has found that in relation to heart attack risk, wine is most protective, followed by beer and then hard liquor.
Schunemann says wine drinkers in his study were also more health-conscious, and white wine drinkers may be even more health-conscious.
What To Do: For information on lung health, visit the American Lung Association. For information on heart health, check out the American Heart Association.
