Mostly when we talk about red wine we also talk about the French paradox. It was not well understood for a long time.

It is cleared exactly now. The French eat the fattiest foods in the world with lot of saturated fats and cholesterol, but have lesser heart attack than the others who consume much less cholesterol.

The French drink very rarely water alone but mix it always with red wine, half and half and drink. Here it is not the role played by alcohol but the chemical which gives the red colour to red wine, resveratrol, which reduces the amount of cholesterol in the blood. Moreover alcohol in small quantity helps to widen the arteries and thus heart does not need to work hard. Small quantity means, one glass wine added to one more glass of water. Be careful, only because of resveratrol and other polyphenols as antioxidants, red wine has this quality.

Case Study

More than 20 years ago I had the cholesterol value of 249 mg and my doctor told that I have to try to reduce this cholesterol. I had no interest to change my food habit as I was travelling lot from on congress to other. So I have decided to try with red wine.

My choice was a dry, red French wine. The alcohol content was 12.5 vol% and I drank everyday in the evening 180 ml of that. After 14 days my cholesterol value was 180 mg. This was a test by a clinical toxicologist who had all the facilities to test. I had no patience, that why 180 ml.

For an average person the amount should be 100 ml which he could take in the evening. It should be taken like a medicine.

Caution – Alcohol is habit forming and makes you an addict. Dry alcoholics must avoid alcohol completely