Daily Glass of Red Wine Helps Management of Type 2 Diabetes

But red wine’s benefits were far more numerous and more pronounced than those of white wine: Ruby-colored varietals significantly increased participants’ HDL cholesterol – the “good” form of cholesterol that protects against heart disease – by almost 10 percent and improved the overall cholesterol profiles of those who got it. Red wine drinkers also saw improvements in their apolipoprotein a1 levels – a measure of lipid metabolism.

Lead scientist Professor Iris Shai, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, said: ‘The differences found between red and white wine were opposed to our original hypothesis that the beneficial effects of wine are mediated predominantly by the alcohol’.

Dr Alasdair Rankin, director of research at Diabetes United Kingdom, said: ‘The evidence that red wine can help improve management of diabetes is extremely weak.

Only the slow alcohol-metabolizers achieved an improvement in blood sugar control, while fast alcohol-metabolizers (with much faster blood alcohol clearance) did not benefit from the glucose control effect of the ethanol in the wine.

Wine helped to decrease heart risk, Shai said, and red wine did it better than white wine did. The genetic interactions suggest that ethanol plays an important role in glucose metabolism, while red wine’s effects additionally involve non-alcoholic constituents.

Moderate white wine consumption also appeared to reduce cardiovascular and metabolic risk, but to a lesser extent than red wine, they wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Doctors have known that alcohol can be heart healthy for many people, but it was unclear for patients with diabetes exactly what was helpful.

Measurements taken at baseline included genetic markers, blood pressure, liver biomarkers, medication use and symptoms, and quality of life. Wine and mineral water were provided free of charge for the purposes of the study. Each group also adhered to a Mediterranean diet (high in fish, nuts, olive oil).

Lipid and glycemic control profiles were primarily measured.

In the new study that followed the research group’s three-month alcohol pilot RCT findings (Shai I, et al., Diabetes Care 2007), the patients were randomized into three equal groups according to whether they consumed a five-ounce serving (150ml) of mineral water, white wine or red wine with dinner every night for two years. Dr. Sood says, “It’s the phenols, it’s the resveratrol, it’s the tannins, they all work together with the ethanol possibly to result in these positive changes”.

Limitations include the participants not being blinded to treatment allocation, but the long-term nature of the study is a strength. “It makes your system more able to sop up the sugar and the calories that you’re consuming in the meal if you have a little alcohol before”, he says.

The study was funded by the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes.