How to Use Red Wine to Keep You Looking Young

Those who enjoy an occasional glass of wine don’t need to feel guilty anymore – it turns out that it could be great for your wellness and wellbeing, especially in terms of anti-aging. Recent research has shown that those who drink red wine from time to time have less chance of suffering from heart disease than those who do not drink. On top of that, scientists have found that there is a strong link between red wine and anti-aging. It turns out that drinking red wine in moderation may be a powerful way to improve your lifespan and your cardiovascular health. It is, however, vital that you choose the correct type of red wine.

 

Only wine that has been produced using the traditional production methods actually has a high enough concentration of the active ingredients that keep you looking young. This ingredient is found in wines that have been produced in Sardinia, Italy and in the South West of France. Wines from these regions were tested, and it was found that they had higher levels of polyphenols (in fact they were up to 10 times higher in these wines than in wines from the New World).

 

When researchers looked further into why this might be, they discovered that the traditional wine-production methods used in these regions ensured that the vital ingredients and beneficial compounds could be effectively extracted from the grapes. This is why the traditional lines are better for your health than the wines that use newer production methods.

 

Other types of wine were tested, too, but it was found conclusively that red wine had the most potent polyphenols. In some red wines, around one gram per litre of wine was actually detected!

 

At the same time, the researchers found that resveratrol, found in alcohol, is not the miracle ingredient it has previously been thought to be, especially when contrasted with polyphenols.

Categories: aging, anti aging, methods, nbsp, production, production methods, Red, Red Wine, Wine, wines

When Alcohol Works: Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but can the same be said for a glass of wine or a beer? Perhaps a legend exists in your family that relatives have told you about your great-grandfather having a glass of beer with dinner every night and living to be 98 years old. Is there any truth in that? Can consuming alcohol in moderation really be beneficial to your health? Read on to find out.

 

Drinking in Moderation

According to research, drinking in moderation can be defined as consuming one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. Moderate drinking does not mean abstaining all week then getting drunk on the weekends. Drinking in excess not only puts your health at risk, but potentially your life as well. 

When you overdo it with alcohol, you increase your chances of driving under the influence (DUI). As Jack Diamond, a DUI lawyer in Massachusetts addresses on his website, being arrested for a DUI can lead to a multitude of problems in your life, including your health, legal and financial situations. It goes without saying that if you are not of legal drinking age, you should not consume any alcohol until you are.

 

Good for Your Heart

Studies have shown that a moderate amount of alcohol actually raises the levels of “good cholesterol,” or HDLs in your bloodstream. Higher levels of HDLs are beneficial in preventing several types of heart disease that result from cardiovascular disease. So, a drink a day may reduce your risk of suffering a heart attack or even a stroke.

 

Live Longer

Apparently, there is some truth to why your great-grandpa lived so long when he had a glass of beer every night with dinner. Consuming alcohol with meals may reduce your risk of dying by up to 18 percent. Just take a look at people who follow the Mediterranean diet for proof of this one. Wine is a staple at Greek, Italian and Spanish lunch and dinner tables, and these cultures tend to suffer from lower instances of diseases and health issues in general, thus, living longer than the rest of us.

 

Prevent Symptoms of the Common Cold

Who knew that a cold could be prevented with a glass of red wine? Researchers discovered that non-smoking individuals who consumed eight to 14 glasses of red wine each week were 60 percent less likely to develop a cold! Sixty percent! That is rather significant when so many Americans miss work each year because of the annoying symptoms of an incurable cold. It seems that the antioxidant properties of red wine are an excellent dose of preventative medicine (and wine tastes better than medicine, too).

 

If you are worried that your usual glass of wine or beer with dinner, or your afternoon martini might cause health issues later in life, worry no more. Instead, enjoy the fact that you are able to reap the benefits of drinking alcohol in moderation. As long as you maintain that moderate intake, you could very well become the next legend in your family.

Writer Melanie Fleury has watched family members get DUI’s, but she also has seen many friends and family members who know not to drive after enjoying a glass of wine with dinner. Jack Diamond, of Jack Diamond Law, knows that a DUI can seem like the end of the world, but assures clients that it is not. 

 

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/klauspost/92783024/

Categories: Alcohol, Benefits, consuming alcohol, Drinking, family members, health, health issues, jack diamond, moderate, moderate drinking, Red Wine, Wine

Five Major Health Mistakes You Make During the Holidays

Taking care of your wellbeing and preventing health concerns is hard enough 11 months out of the year, but when the holidays roll around? Forget about it! Between the office parties, cosy nights in and Christmas day itself, you’re likely to partake in all sorts of indulgences that do damage to your health. Let’s take a look at some common mistakes you make during the holidays, and how to make smarter choices instead.

 

1. Not eating before a party: While skipping your afternoon snack before feasting at the office party seems like a good idea for your weight loss wellness, certified nutrition specialist J.J. Virgin, author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, warns against it. ‘It makes sense to arrive at a party a little hungry, but to come starving means a glass of wine and appetisers will lead to one big caloric nightmare,’ she says. ‘Besides, parties never start when they’re supposed to, and you know there’s going to be some gooey, crunchy appetizer that will be your undoing.’ So, before you leave your desk, taper your appetite by popping a handful of raw almonds.

 

2. Judging the meat based on sight: According to Ben Chapman, PhD food safety specialist at North Carolina State University, ‘Old cookbooks say to “cook until there’s no pink meat remaining, or until the juices run clear,” but there’s been quite a bit of research done on both poultry and meat that shows that these are not good indicators of whether they have reached a temperature that’s considered safe.’ Foodborne illnesses can linger on uncooked food, so use a meat thermometer to ensure that you’re cooking poultry to 165, and red meat to 160.

 

3. Rewashing bagged salad: Whether you grab a bag of salad for a pre-feast starter or use it as part of a party buffet, you don’t need to rewash salad that’s been twice washed. Chapman notes, ‘A national microbiological safety panel looked at those bags and they concluded that even if you wash them again, you’re unlikely to remove any type of pathogens that are still hanging on.’ In fact, by touching the lettuce, you’re only exposing it to other pathogens, especially if you’ve been handling raw meat. Chapman asserts, ‘The best thing you can do is open the bag and dump it right in a salad bowl, ready to eat.’

 

4. Brushing your teeth after a glass of wine: Hosting a party enables you to rush upstairs and scrub away any unsightly wine stains on your teeth, but dentist Gigi Meinecke, a spokesperson for the Academy of General Dentistry, warns that you could actually be raising your risk for permanent staining. The acidity in red and white wine can dissolve the enamel on your tooth, and so brushing straightaway can contribute to erosion. Meinecke recommends rinsing with a glass of water to neutralise the acid, or, even better, avoid staining in the first place by sipping and immediately swallowing your wine, rather than swishing it in your mouth.

 

5. Sticking with your regular workout: Not budging from your exercise regime may seem like a great way to stave off excess Christmas season weight but Jessica Smith, co-author of The Thin in 10 Weight-Loss Plan, notes this ‘could backfire if you find yourself running ragged trying to get everything done and then getting to the gym on top of it all. If your to-do list is already overflowing, don’t add stress by forcing in a long workout that may interrupt more important health habits like getting enough sleep.’ Split up your usual 45-60 minute workout into 15-minute sessions.

Categories: Brushing Teeth, health, meat, nbsp, Party, Weight Loss, Wine, Workouts

How to Make Your Skin Look Younger Using Household Resources

When it comes to ageing body parts, your skin really lets you down. Whether it’s dark circles, a few wrinkles, or a little bit of sagginess here and there, your skin may as well be tattooed with “Look how old I am!” So clearly your skin is the best place to start with your anti-ageing regime – and you don’t even have to leave the house to do it.

Firstly, when your face feels dull and exhausted, you can revive it with a simple skin-patting technique. You should start at the top of the cheek bones because – due to fluid retention – your eyes are likely to develop bags. Using the soft pads of your fingertips, quickly pat your face towards your nose and then back to your cheek bones in an upward motion, coming around to your temples and across your eyebrows. This will rejuvenate and brighten your face – especially if you then apply moisturiser using upward strokes, moving up the neck to your jaw line.

You can even get your skin looking gorgeous as you sleep – as long as your position is correct. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, sleeping in the same position can lead to wrinkles that don’t disappear once you’re up, so your best bet for smoother, wrinkle-free skin is to sleep face up, on your back. Many of us prefer to sleep on our side, but this position increases the wrinkles on your cheeks and chin, while sleeping face down gives you a furrowed brow.

This next tip may make Communion problematic, but anti-ageing skin sirens should dread white bread (although red wine is fine!) A recent study from Australia has found that a Low Glycaemic Index Diet helped participants to decrease spots, and so you need to ditch your white refined carbs, such as bread, cereal and pasta, in favour of wholemeal varieties.

However, red wine is great for your skin, as grapes contain resveratrol. This is one of the most powerful anti-ageing antioxidants that has ever been discovered, with a number of studies indicating that it can help you maintain a youthful complexion by fighting damaging free radicals. For obvious reasons, you shouldn’t overdo it – but a small glass of red wine every other day is practically doctor-recommended!

Categories: Bread, patting, Wine

Wine’s Acidity Is Important When Choosing Food

Picking the right wine to have with your food is very important and people often spend a lot of time and money trying to come up with the right flavour combination for them. If this is something you want to be serious about you might start reading around the subject. And when reading recommendations about wines, you might come across the words “good acidity,” and there are a number of reasons for that.

Acidity is important as it gives a wine a bit of lift and provides brightness to wine that might otherwise be flat or uninteresting. However it also helps to balance out a wine’s residual sugar content, this can stop the wine from coming across as tasting too sweet. But probably the most important aspect of wine that is high in acidity is that it will be excellent with food. For example, pairing a wine with high acidity alongside an acidic food, such as tomatoes, provides a nice complement by softening the taste.

Rich and decadent foods like meat, fish or anything that contains lots of cream and butter are also a great pairing with high-acidity wine. The wine cuts through the fat and allows you to taste both the food and drink in perfect balance. That should be your primary objective when it comes to choosing wine – it must work with the food rather than against it; this maximises your ability to enjoy both.

Acidity isn’t the only element of taste that you should consider when choosing your combination of food and wine. Other factors include a wine’s fruit flavours and sweetness. But acidity is, without question, a very important element in your ability to enjoy the food and drink and it should certainly weigh in on whatever pairing decision you make. There are a number of great high-acidity white wines including riesling, sauvignon blanc, chenin blanc and pinot grigio.

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Wine’s Acidity Is Important When Choosing Food

Categories: acidity, Food, Wine

Why Should You Be Supplementing With Resveratrol?

There are so many vitamin and mineral supplements that one or two important ones can get overlooked. This is certainly the case for resveratrol, which, though most commonly associated with wine, has many benefits to your fitness, mental wellness, vision and overall wellbeing.

Endurance training is enough to put anyone off exercise altogether, but resveratrol could help to enhance your results. In 2012, a Canadian study found that resveratrol supplementation could give you similar skeletal muscle benefits to endurance training. Combining the two resulted in a performance increase of 21%, but even on its own resveratrol increased endurance and oxidative metabolism, and enhanced cardiac function.

Another Canadian study discovered that if you drink one to two five-ounce glasses of wine per day, you can reduce your risk of developing atherosclerotic disease, a precursor to heart disease and stroke, which means that you subsequently reduce your risk of death by roughly 30%. Experts explain that resveratrol preconditions your heart and provides it with the best protection to avoid cardiac events.

But it’s not just heart disease that resveratrol protects you from. According to a recent French study, resveratrol, which can be found naturally in blueberries, peanuts, grapes, and both red and white wines, can slow down the production of cancerous cells and therefore could be considered an effective anticancer agent.

Also, vision loss is a normal part of getting older, but according to a study by Missouri researchers, resveratrol has the ability to counteract this common occurrence. Resveratrol can regulate angiogenesis, which prevents the abnormal growth of blood vessels that are damaging to eyesight. Further, for men, resveratrol may be an option if your doctor tells you that your testosterone needs a boost. A Korean study managed to improve blood testosterone concentration in mice by more than 50% following a 28-day period of resveratrol consumption.

Finally, resveratrol not only benefits your body, but also your mind, as a study here in the UK found that neurological blood flow was increased following resveratrol consumption. Blood flow boosts your brain power, and another study, this time in Illinois, gave mice resveratrol supplements and this improved their memory function and overall mental performance. So whether it’s a new supplement you want to add to your regime, or you just want another excuse for drinking wine, it seems that resveratrol could be your wellness-boosting new best friend.

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Why Should You Be Supplementing With Resveratrol?

Categories: resveratrol, Supplements, Wine

If you stay away from wine with dinner because you’re worried that it may cause indigestion symptoms, you may have been doing so unnecessarily. Though it may inhibit your diet wellness slightly by slowing down your digestion, according to a small Swiss study, you don’t need to fear your wellbeing will suffer heartburn, belching or feelings of bloating. Researchers from the University Hospital of Zurich investigated 20 volunteers, 14 of the men, who ate 200g of the popular Swiss dish Cheese Fondue, alongside of which they drank either 300ml of white wine or black tea. The investigators wanted to examine the effects of alcohol on the digestive system when calorie-laden meals are eaten, and after the participants had eaten, they drank either 20ml of schnapps or 20ml of water. The results were that the group who drank alcohol with their fondue had much slower digestion, but that the alcohol did not contribute to an increase in indigestion problems, and made participants feel fuller for a longer period of time. According to lead researcher Dr Mark Fox, who is now at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, ‘The effect of alcohol is to relax the stomach,’ which ‘in turn reduces the force that drives the meal out of the stomach’. Thus taking alcohol may make you feel more comfortable in the short term; however you will likely feel fuller for longer. Indeed patients that took both wine and schnapps reported exactly this.’ According to Fox, ‘The more you drink the worse this will be. The main problem, especially in those prone to heartburn, is likely to be fullness and reflux at night since the stomach remains full for so long.’ However, the study’s authors concluded that any healthy person, whether they are a native to Switzerland or a tourist, ‘should be reassured that they can continue to enjoy this traditional meal with the beverage of their choice without undue concern about postprandial digestive discomfort’ and Fox suggests that ‘There is no reason to believe that the effects of alcohol on digestion are limited to fondue’ and the results of the study ‘can be generalised to address the wider issue of alcohol’s effects on digestion and digestive comfort after any large, rich meal of the kind we all enjoy over the festive season’. Why Drinking Wine is Fine with Rich Foods

If you stay away from wine with dinner because you’re worried that it may cause indigestion symptoms, you may have been doing so unnecessarily. Though it may inhibit your diet wellness slightly by slowing down your digestion, according to a small Swiss study, you don’t need to fear your wellbeing will suffer heartburn, belching or feelings of bloating.

 

Researchers from the University Hospital of Zurich investigated 20 volunteers, 14 of the men, who ate 200g of the popular Swiss dish Cheese Fondue, alongside of which they drank either 300ml of white wine or black tea. The investigators wanted to examine the effects of alcohol on the digestive system when calorie-laden meals are eaten, and after the participants had eaten, they drank either 20ml of schnapps or 20ml of water.

 

The results were that the group who drank alcohol with their fondue had much slower digestion, but that the alcohol did not contribute to an increase in indigestion problems, and made participants feel fuller for a longer period of time. According to lead researcher Dr Mark Fox, who is now at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, ‘The effect of alcohol is to relax the stomach,’ which ‘in turn reduces the force that drives the meal out of the stomach’. Thus taking alcohol may make you feel more comfortable in the short term; however you will likely feel fuller for longer. Indeed patients that took both wine and schnapps reported exactly this.’

 

According to Fox, ‘The more you drink the worse this will be. The main problem, especially in those prone to heartburn, is likely to be fullness and reflux at night since the stomach remains full for so long.’ However, the study’s authors concluded that any healthy person, whether they are a native to Switzerland or a tourist, ‘should be reassured that they can continue to enjoy this traditional meal with the beverage of their choice without undue concern about postprandial digestive discomfort’ and Fox suggests that ‘There is no reason to believe that the effects of alcohol on digestion are limited to fondue’ and the results of the study ‘can be generalised to address the wider issue of alcohol’s effects on digestion and digestive comfort after any large, rich meal of the kind we all enjoy over the festive season’.

 

Why Drinking Wine is Fine with Rich Foods

Categories: Food, Information, Wine