One More Reason to Drink Wine

As I age, and yes, it's better than the alternative, I realize that my body doesn't work as well as it used to. Put me on the tennis court and I'm a step or two or ten slower than I used to be and I was never fast to begin with. My idea of jumping is getting at least one heel off the ground at a time. But, my mind still works pretty well. And, my memory, both short-term and long-term really has not faded. Perhaps that my memory has thus far withstood the test of aging has something to do with drinking red wine.

What's that, you ask? Yes, scientific studies have posited that this is for real. In fact, one that was fairly recently punlished in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that consuming red wine and cheese on a fairly regular basis, but not to extreme, had a significantly positive correlation with cognitive acuity in later years. That's cool. I like good red wine and I tend to like cheeses that pair well with red wine, so perhaps I can keep my memory and whatever else there is to my cognitive acuity.

The researchers found other benefits though and they are not all related to aging. I know this will come as a tremendous surprise, but the same researchers found that adults who have regularly consumed morderate amounts of red wine on a fairly regular basis over the roughly 14 months since the world shut down due to COVID-19 have had a statistically significantly lower rate of both self-diagnosed and clinical depression than has the adult world at large. White wine showed similar benefits, but not to the same extent as red wine.

The research team in this study had their test group of roughly 2000 adults asked the group to complete daily a food intake form. They were to record, among other things, their consumption of fruit, both fresh, and dried, vegetables, both raw and cooked, salad, poultry, lamb, pork, beef, fish, both oily and lean, cheese, bread, coffee and tea, beer and cider, sparkling wine, white wine, red wine, and liquor. 

Subjects were then given something called Fluid Intelligence Tests which are, according to the study, tests that show how well the participants can "think on the fly." In other words, very roughly speaking, they are tests that show how quickly a subject can react appropriately to an external stimulus. Red wine, in particular, was found to meaningfully improve this thinking while flying (my poor attempt at humor), but it was not number one on the list.

The four most key "food group" (since the study made red wine a food group, it is now one in my mind) related observations of the study were these:

• Eat lamb at least once per week
• Cheese protects against cognitive decline late in life better than any other food
• Daily consumption of alcoholic beverages, but red wine standing out positively among all alcoholic beverages was found to increase late in life cognitive acuity
• Among those people with a predisposition for Alzheimer's, excessive (whatever is defined as excessive) consumption of salt is bad

And, when we add to that that red wine in moderation has been found to reduce blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart disease, the conclusions seem clear. Aren't you going to have some red wine tonight?