good news if you like your red..

[fullofbeans]

As we all know alcohol is not good if you think (like me) that for your case looking after your immune system is extremely important..

However as already mentioned I beleive it appears that having a glass or two of red does not decrease the amount of your immune system cells count..

(That said I still would not advise to drink it regularly, but that is my opinion.)


"Ethanol may be detrimental to immune cells due to the generation of free radicals during detoxification. If this is true, then alcoholic beverages that contain antioxidants, like red wine, should be protective against immune cell damage. We investigated this by giving mice either a red muscadine wine (Vitis rotundifolia), a cabernet sauvignon (Vitis vinifera), ethanol (all at 6% alcohol) or water in the water bottles as the sole fluid for 8 wk. Plasma antioxidant capacity was measured with http://jn.nutrition.org/emath/agr.gifhttp://jn.nutrition.org/emath/agr.gif-diphenyl-ß-picrylhydrazyl and was more than doubled in the mice that consumed wine compared to control mice that consumed water or ethanol. Cytochrome P450–2E1 levels and glutathione-S-transferase activity were modified in such a way as to be interpreted as protective. An immune response was elicited by an intraperitoneal injection of lipopolysaccharide. Later (24 h), natural killer cells and T-lymphocytes derived from the circulation were quantitated in the leukocyte fraction by flow cytometry. Ethanol consumption, as ethanol, significantly suppressed baseline cell numbers relative to the other groups. However, the mice that consumed the same amount of alcohol as wine had baseline cell numbers not different from the water-consuming controls. The lymphocyte response to lipopolysaccharide challenge was inhibited in the mice that consumed ethanol, but was normal in those that consumed the same amount of alcohol in the form of wine. We conclude that there are phytochemicals acting as antioxidants and impacting on the detoxification pathway in the wine that offset the detrimental effects of ethanol on immunity. "

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/130/5/1091

[Hopeful]

Thanks for posting this. Here is a link to an interesting study I posted in the articles forum that also has good news for those of us who like our wines: http://her2support.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=35180&referrerid=1173

Hopeful

[fullofbeans]

Thanks hopefull,

your post conclusion is

"Conclusion: These results suggest that women who consume alcohol before a diagnosis of breast cancer have improved survival, which does not appear to be attributable to differences in stage, screening, or treatment. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(8):1988–96)"

This leaves me perplex. Is it about people that used to consume alcohol then stopped and now have a better chance?? this could make sense I met a few reformed alcoholic that should have died of cancer but that are still around and well (they had stopped drinking upon diagnosis). If their immune system were always low before the cancer but given a chance to recover after and battle perhaps they would have never have had cancer at the first place if they had not been drinking..

[Hopeful]

fullofbeans,

This is going to sound silly, but the study was designed to look only at what women did prior to dx, and not what their behavior was after dx. So, the answer to your question whether this is about former drinkers who reformed after dx having better survival is one the study doesn't ask or answer - it just shows the difference in survival rates for women who consumed alcohol prior to dx vs. those that did not.

Hopeful

[MJo]

I'm happy for all you wine drinkers. Before my diagnosis, I drank red wine. Health benefits, considered classier than beer, etc. After diagnosis, I decided that -- within reason -- I'm going to do darn well what I please. I love beer. Phooey to those classy little glasses of red and white. Give me a big brown glass of Ringness Dark.