Is A Bottle Of Wine A Day Good For Your Health?

We all know that drinking a glass of wine, particularly Italian red wine, is good for your health. It can help with all sorts of things, from preventing heart disease through to preventing certain types of cancer and even helping people avoid strokes. It is also reputed to help with brain function, which is especially helpful for those who are starting to advance in years and are worried about the effects of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

However, recent information has surfaced that suggests it may be good to drink an entire bottle of wine per day. Obviously, this would need to be spread out over the course of the day in order to prevent intoxication, but the information appears to have been verified by the World Health Organization.

Here we will take a look at what people are saying about this potentially revolutionary new way to drink wine in order to benefit your health and find out whether or not it is something that you should consider bringing into your daily routine.

The News

Reports began circulating in 2014 that the recommended daily allowance for alcohol consumption may be a little less than you should be drinking. In the UK, the recommendation essentially limits the average person to a medium or large glass of wine per day, depending on a number of factors that include height, weight and gender. Regardless, it is a fairly small amount that has still been proven to have medical benefits.

However, a leading scientist has begun discussing the distinct possibility that drinking more than this every day is not harmful to our health. In fact, he claims that drinking an entire bottle may not only help you to maintain your current levels of health, but may even allow you to experience even more benefits than limiting yourself to a single glass every day.

Dr Kari Poikolainen, who is an alcohol expert who used to ply his trade at the prestigious World Health Organization, which is a group that often provides advice on how best to live our lives based on the current scientific knowledge of the time, has analysed decades of research into the effects that wine can have on the human body. This research takes into account different amounts of wine consumed per day and the results, if Dr Poikolainen is to be believed, are actually quite shocking.

He has concluded that drinking is only harmful to the human body if you consume more than 13 units per day. For a frame of reference, the average glass of wine contains only around 2.3 units, with an entire bottle being somewhere in the region of 10 units.

The claims may come as something of a shock to people who live in a more reserved country that has recommendations far below this amount, particularly those who live in countries like the UK where it is recommended that people consume no more than 3 units per day at the moment.

To add further credence to his findings, Dr Poikolainen is also claiming that drinking more than the current recommended amount of wine may even be healthier than being entirely teetotal, as you still get the benefits of consuming alcohol, even considering the effects that larger volumes may have.

He states: “The weight of the evidence shows moderate drinking is better than abstaining and heavy drinking is worse than abstaining – however the moderate amounts can be higher than the guidelines say.”

It is a shocking revelation that has seen some opposition from groups that advocate the consumption of lower doses of alcohol, however it is not without scientific credence. Bear in mind that Dr Poikolainen is formerly of the World Health Organization and is an expert in the field of alcohol, particularly when it comes to results based off scientific evidence, so it is possible that his word holds more credit than that of people who haven’t spent their entire lives studying the effects of alcohol on the body beyond the idea of intoxication.

At this point in time, there is no official word from the World Health Organization about whether or not this idea that drinking an entire bottle of wine per day is actually beneficial, so it will be interesting to see what stance they take, if any, in the coming months.

What You Need to Consider

So now that you know that it is possible that drinking a larger amount of alcohol than you are used to may actually be beneficial, what else do you need to consider before you start consuming an entire bottle of wine per day?

Well, firstly you need to remember that all of the health benefits in the world won’t prevent you from becoming intoxicated if you drink too much, too quickly. An entire bottle of wine consumed of the course of a whole day will likely have little effect on your mental faculties, but drinking it all in a short period of time could lead to you becoming intoxicated, which will prevent you from driving and may lead to you underperforming when at work. As such, you need to be careful and spread your drinks out over the course of an entire day to ensure that you actually get the benefits that the research suggests you should, without creating any of the issues that drinking too much can cause.

You also need to consider what you are drinking. The research simply talks about units of alcohol, rather than specific drinks, so you need to be careful about what kind of alcohol you consume. For example, if you drink beer or lager you may find that the calories you are consuming outweigh the health benefits you get from the alcohol. However, by sticking to wine, red in particular, you will be consuming far fewer calories in addition to getting the maximum amount of health benefits.

To conclude, it is likely that more research needs to be done in order to prove this claims. However, they have come from a credible source and thus may be well worth considering if you enjoy the odd glass of wine or two per day.