Do wine drinkers just have healthier diets?

Feb. 1, 2006

Are wine drinkers healthier than beer drinkers? If that is the case, it may have less to do with their choice of drink than with what they eat with it.

A new study found that shoppers who bought wine in supermarkets were much more likely to buy healthy foods like olives and low-fat cheese than were beer buyers, who were more partial to things like chips. The study, which was conducted in Denmark, appears online in the British journal BMJ.

Studies have linked a moderate amount of alcohol use with better health, and this is especially true when it comes to wine, which has components that may help prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Still, it is possible that whatever health benefits wine drinkers enjoy actually result from overall better diets, some studies have suggested.

The problem for researchers has been getting an accurate reading on people’s diets in general and alcohol use in particular. Those being surveyed often understate their alcohol use and overstate their consumption of healthy foods.

So for this study, the researchers tracked the sale of wine and beer over a six-month period at 98 supermarkets, then looked at what kinds of food the shoppers bought.

One author, Dr. Morten Gronbaek, said the researchers had expected to find differences in buying patterns, but not to the extent that they did.

There are other reasons wine drinkers may be healthier than beer drinkers, the researchers said. Wine tends to be drunk with food, and in smaller amounts, they noted, possibly affecting how the body metabolizes it. And wine drinkers tend to be better educated and better off financially than beer drinkers, factors that would also help account for their better health.

DO SLOWER REACTIONS MEAN AN EARLIER DEATH?People who fare poorly on tests intended to assess mental skills are at greater risk of early death, a new study reports.

Writing in Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers say they found a strong link between slower reaction times and a higher mortality rate in a given period. People who did poorly on memory tests also had a somewhat higher mortality rate.

Earlier studies had reached similar conclusions, but the researchers said they were surprised to find that poor reaction times seemed to increase mortality rates even among younger study participants.

The study, led by Beverly Shipley of the University of Edinburgh, looked at about 7,000 people over 19 years in England, Scotland and Wales.

In one test, participants were asked to strike a “0” on a keyboard as soon as they saw one appear on a computer screen. In another, they had to quickly choose a key that matched what was shown on the screen.

Experts have considered the connection between poor test scores and mortality as a reflection of the deterioration of the aging body. But that would not explain the higher mortality rates for younger people.

CARBON MONOXIDE’S LINGERING TOLLCarbon monoxide poisoning is the most common kind of accidental poisoning in the United States, playing a role in 40,000 emergency rooms visits a year.But while it is increasingly unusual for victims to die at the hospital, a new study suggests that when many are sent home, their problems are far from over.

Researchers say that carbon monoxide victims who suffer damage to their heart muscles, a common occurrence, are at much higher risk for heart attacks in later years. The study, led by Christopher Henry of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, appears in the current Journal of the American Medical Association.

Carbon monoxide poisoning can occur when people are exposed to combustion, including car exhaust, fires and faulty heating systems.

The researchers looked at what happened to 230 people treated from 1994 to 2002 for moderate to severe carbon monoxide poisoning at a Midwestern hospital. The study followed their health until 2005.

Five percent of the patients died in the hospital. But “despite appearing to be a low-risk population from a cardiovascular standpoint,” the researchers wrote, after seven and a half years, about a quarter of the rest were dead – a rate three times as high as expected. For those patients whose heart muscles had been injured, the figure was about 38 percent, with almost half dying of what appeared to be cardiovascular problems.

ICE SKATERS AND HEAD INJURIESChildren who ice-skate suffer many more head and face injuries than those who roller-skate.

Though it may seem natural to assume that the explanation lies with the helmets commonly used by those who are not skating on ice, this does not appear to be the case, researchers reported Monday. Writing in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, they said the key to reducing head injuries might instead be in the wrists.

The researchers, Christy Knox and Dawn Comstock of the Columbus Children’s Research Institute in Ohio, based their conclusions on a study of how children fell when they were skating. They took a video camera to indoor skating rinks and recorded a total of 216 ice skating falls and 201 falls involving roller skates.

In most cases, they found, skaters fall forward. And more than 90 percent of the time, they try to break the fall with their hands and arms. That generally protects the heads of roller skaters, but because ice is slippery, it does not help ice skaters much. The study found that the ice skaters were five times as likely to strike their heads as the roller skaters when they fell.

The ideal solution, the authors said, is for ice skaters to wear hockey-type helmets. But that is unlikely to be popular, they said, so the answer may be specially made wrist guards.

Knox and Comstock said they were trying to develop a wrist guard that would grip the ice, allowing skaters to protect their heads in case of falls.