There are only small amounts of resveratrol in red wine. Besides, ethanol-induced oxidative from drinking alcohol would offset any of the benefits from the resveratrol. Ethanol accelerates ageing, causes cancers, and increases permeability of tight junction proteins of the blood-brain barrier. Drinking alcohol = death wish. It's chronic suicide. Any study based on someone who drinks or smokes or takes recreational drugs of abuse, will always yield unreliable conjectures/results/conclusions/discussions.
And even if you do doubt resveratrol, based on the research of all the amazing effects would you really want to risk passing up on the opportunity that it really is something amazing, by not taking it? (Because it really is profoundly remarkable as more and more emerging research is proving).
Well that's pretty extreme. THat's like saying driving a car or flying in a plane is chronic suicide because it increases your risk. Sure, it's technically true, but the real damage from alcohol comes from binge drinking, or often drinking more than five drinks at one sitting. Most deaths from alcohol are actually caused by DUIs ironically enough.
Furthermore oxidation is not inherently bad; in fact it's biologically necessary. It depends on the context on what is being oxidized. Like anything, it depends on how much oxidation occurs.
Yes but it's recently been found that most people binge drink without realizing it (they go out once a week and have enough alcohol to equal the amount of 4 or 5 beers, yielding an instant reduction in new brain cells in the hypothalamus by 40%). Have you noticed throughout your life, that all the people you encounter, and friends and family, have significant forehead wrinkles by the time they're around 25, and are "social drinkers"? Have you met the odd-one-out person who NEEEEVER ever drank for their entire life, and at age 30 they barely have any forehead wrinkles? I have. I've noticed this time and time again. It's a highly consistent pattern. Did you know that each year alcohol is the cause of over 12,500 new cases of cancer in the UK, including breast cancer? How much of a financial burden do these new alcohol-caused cancer cases, cause our governments, our healthcare systems, or tax dollars?
I think therefore that your analogy is not so accurate ("driving a car or flying a plane is chronic suicide"), because with consumption of alcohol there is a definitive outcome of damage, whereas with your analogy there are only accidents, which pretty much limits your analogy to people who die of alcohol intoxication from drinking their faces off in one sitting.
Just because alcohol is freely available in public, like tobacco products, it doesn't mean it's safe.
And yes oxidation is indeed beneficial for things such as destroying bacteria/fungi/parasites, and even in mitochondrial signalling pathways. The body does this well enough on its own. Alcohol's addition of oxidative stress is unwelcome and is no different from a meth addict who causes the very same damage to tight junction proteins of the blood-brain barrier and before they know it they look 20 years older after 5 years of meth abuse.
Let's not forget here that there's strong evidence finding excessive oxidative stress to be the primordial cause of nearly ALL human diseases known to man.
Of course there's a benefits:risk ratio when it comes to drinking alcohol, but I think for a normal healthy person, it should never be included in their prophylaxis strategy.
Edited by holdout, 16 July 2014 - 04:55 PM.
