THURSDAY, July 25, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Wine drinkers are healthier.
That may sound like a boastful bumper sticker, but it's actually the conclusion of a new study.
Researchers from Duke University and other institutions tracked people who preferred wine, beer, spirits or no alcohol, and found clear associations between the type of alcohol preferred and other health habits.
In short, wine drinkers won. They had more healthy habits than the teetotalers or the beer or hard liquor lovers.
For years, researchers have found wine is associated with reductions in heart disease risk, and some have suggested that wine conveys some health benefits that other alcoholic beverages do not, although the idea is controversial.
This new study is not the first to suggest wine drinkers are the healthiest of those who imbibe, and it's likely not going to be the last, says lead author John C. Barefoot, a research professor at Duke University.
"There are lots of factors that determine your beverage preference," he says, including cultural factors, family habits, even the region of the country you live in. "It's hard to definitively sort out if there is one real cause of the health benefits of wine drinking. More than likely there is a lot of things going on."
The researchers polled more than 4,400 men and women enrolled in the University of North Carolina Alumni Heart Study, an ongoing study of heart disease risk factors. They asked the participants, average age 48, whether they preferred wine, hard liquor, beer, or no alcohol, and then asked about other habits. To be termed a preference, the beverage had to account for more than half of their alcohol intake.
The wine drinkers (who weren't asked to specify if they drank white, red or both) were found to have the healthiest lifestyle habits: exercising regularly, not smoking, eating less saturated fat and cholesterol, and having a lower body mass index. They ate more fruits and vegetables, and less red and fried meat. The study appears in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Barefoot says the finding is "not so surprising. This is consistent with other studies." He cites two Danish studies that found the same correlations.
Critics of past wine studies have said the health effects might be due to higher income or higher education of the typical wine drinker. However, in the Duke study, controlling for income and education had little effect on those associations, and the wine drinkers still won the healthy lifestyle awards. The sample, Barefoot adds, is also more homogenous than in other studies -- 99 percent were Caucasian, affluent, highly educated and from the same geographic region.
Preferring wine, Barefoot says, may be part of an overall pattern that leads to better health status.
Dr. Arthur Klatsky, a pioneer in studies on how alcohol can help the heart, notes the Duke research finding ?is not brand new." More than 10 years ago, his study about California wine drinkers appeared in the British Journal of Addiction. In that research he found that those who prefer wine as opposed to beer or hard liquor are likely to be women, young or middle-aged, nonsmokers, better educated and healthy.
However, the newest study, he adds, "is kind of interesting because it's another U.S. population different from ours." The Duke study, he says, "corroborates what we were finding in California."
Healthy habits "tend to cluster," says Klatsky, a senior consultant in cardiology at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, Calif.
"Wine is part of a healthy lifestyle in a lot of people's minds," he says. "It's considered the beverage of moderation. You don't down a couple of [wine] doubles to calm your nerves."
Rather, he says, the image of wine is of culture and moderation. People often sip wine while listening to music, for instance, he says, or over dinner in a fine restaurant.
Next, Bare foot?s group will take a look back at the same sample, inquiring about their habits during school. Then, they will evaluate whether any of those habits such as activities, diet and so on might predict who will become the healthy wine drinkers by middle age.
What To Do
For information on alcohol, wine, and heart disease, see American Heart Association.
For a summary of a conference on alcohol and health, try the New York Academy of Sciences.
