{"id":6997,"date":"2019-04-07T15:15:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T19:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/?p=6997"},"modified":"2019-05-31T20:01:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T00:01:29","slug":"the-french-their-wine-and-cancer-an-interview-with-will-clower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=6997","title":{"rendered":"The French, Their Wine, and Cancer. An Interview with Will Clower"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Telegraph of London asked me to comment on the recent kerfuffle on the French, their wine, and cancer. Below is the article. Please let me know your thoughts!<\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n

When Dr Will Clower moved from his native Alabama to work at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences in Lyon, France, one of the first things he noticed about the French was their advanced attitude towards wine. Sitting with his fellow scientists in the university\u2019s lunchroom on his first day, he spotted a cask of red wine alongside the\u00a0juice, water, and sandwiches, from which members could pour themselves endless refills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt struck me as odd \u2013\u00a0we [in the United States] see wine as an intoxicant, it\u2019s the sum of its pharmacological properties, so why on Earth would you serve it over lunch? But as I watched, I never saw anyone going back to get more. For them it\u2019s considered food, so of course you\u2019re going to have it with your lunch \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s a no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Dr Clower, it was the perfect illustration of\u00a0the \u201cFrench paradox\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the idea that French people can drink as much\u00a0vin<\/em>\u00a0as they like without ever seeming to suffer from the associated health problems. France\u2019s love affair with wine reared its head last week when Sante Publique, the country\u2019s public health body, prompted outrage after it advised adults to limit their wine intake to two glasses per day.<\/p>\n

The advice was greeted with a resounding\u00a0non<\/em>\u00a0from government ministers, one of whom \u2013\u00a0Agriculture Secretary Didier Guillaume \u2013\u00a0said: \u201cWine isn\u2019t alcohol like the others.\u201d\u00a0Emmanuel Macron, the French president,\u00a0has previously admitted to drinking wine with lunch and dinner every day<\/a>: \u201cThere is a public health danger when young people get drunk on strong alcohol or beer, but not with wine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Are they correct? Are the health impacts of wine any different to those of beer, spirits, and other alcohols? And, on this side of the Channel, can we afford to drink wine as much as the French without shaving years off our life?<\/p>\n

Ask a British government official, and they\u2019ll probably tell you that there is no such thing as a \u00a0\u2018good\u2019 level of any alcohol. All booze is harmful, they say, and that includes wine, the drink adored so much by middle-class midlifers.<\/p>\n

Launching its\u00a0new guidelines in 2016<\/a>, which advised adults to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol each week, Public Health England said: \u201cThe benefits of moderate drinking for heart health are not as strong as previously thought \u2026 The risk of developing a range of illnesses increases with any amount you drink on a regular basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their advice is backed up by studies linking even a small intake of alcohol to an increased risk of various cancers, including liver cancer, breast cancer, and colon cancer.<\/p>\n

But Dr Clower, who has written two books on the so-called \u2018French Paradox\u2019 since moving away from Lyon, isn\u2019t so sure. If you look at it country by country, he says, the data does not show that higher wine consumption means higher rates of cancer. \u201cThere\u2019s a closet full of caveats to that, but what it does say is that the relationship between wine consumption and cancer is overly simplistic and doesn\u2019t tell the whole picture,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He says that one-off studies can only tell us so much about the health impacts of wine \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s far more useful to look at individual countries that are doing it well and try to emulate them. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, [a study comes out saying], \u2018Drink wine because science shows it\u2019ll make you live ten years longer\u2019. And then a month later, \u2018Don\u2019t drink because it\u2019s going to kill you\u2019. There are cultural habits and cultural behaviours, and if those behaviours lead to lower weight, longer lives, healthier bodies, then the reason why is truly academic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe French live longer, they don\u2019t have the cancers that [other Western countries] do, they don\u2019t have the heart disease we do, they don\u2019t have the diabetes that we do. Whatever they\u2019re doing, they should keep doing it because it\u2019s working for them, and the reasons will be revealed over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In words that will come as even more of a delight to vino-lovers, he also thinks that wine can indeed be good for the heart, due to their high levels of antioxidants.<\/p>\n

This is a view shared by Toral Shah, a nutritional scientist and chef who specialises in cancer prevention after overcoming the disease in her twenties. She says there has been \u201creally mixed research\u201d into the impacts of wine on cardiovascular (heart) disease, but thinks that the high levels of antioxidants and polyphenols found in wine (particularly red wine) help our heart and immune system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at people over a long period of time, the people that have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease are the people that drink one glass of wine a day,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a U-shaped curve: drinking one, maximum two glasses of red wine, three of four times a week, can be beneficial to longevity. The French haven\u2019t got it wrong: they\u2019re normally drinking wine rather than hard alcoholic cocktails.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the French drink their wine much more socially than the British, she says, usually chatting to their friends and family over a meal. \u201cThe [French] social health is much better, they\u2019re sitting with more people, they\u2019re interacting with more people. In France they still have a proper lunch break, they sit down away from their desk, eat something and drink wine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like us [in Britain], where we\u2019re not really eating well, we\u2019re necking a load of alcohol when we go out and not having any food.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Social health\u2019 has now become such an accepted part of medicine, she says, that it is listed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) under its definition of health:\u00a0\u201cIt impacts our health so much more than we realised ever before, and it\u2019s only now that we have a broken social network in the Western world that we\u2019re really starting to see the impact. It\u2019s only a product probably of the last 30 or 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before you run to your local wine merchant to set up a daily order of Pinot Noir, however, Shah also recommends limiting yourself to one glass a day, with some alcohol-free days each week.<\/p>\n

This makes Emmanuel Macron, who claims to drink a glass with lunch and dinner every day, something of a bad example. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit too much\u201d, she says of the French president\u2019s habits. \u201cHe\u2019s 41, he looks in shape for his age, but he needs to consider that your metabolism changes a lot at that age. Maybe he should have a few days [each week] where he doesn\u2019t drink alcohol \u2013\u00a0that\u2019s a recommendation from the WHO.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph of London asked me to comment on the recent kerfuffle on the French, their wine, and cancer. Below is the article. Please let me know your thoughts! ______________ … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[494],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-wine.jpg?fit=640%2C455&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Qv5g-1OR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2750,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2750","url_meta":{"origin":6997,"position":0},"title":"When you need a little decadence","author":"Will Clower","date":"July 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Wine, chocolate, and cheese are typically viewed as the dietary sins that you absolutely must stay away from if you want to control those growing belly bulges and saddle bags. The saturated fat, the cocoa butter, the empty alcohol calories! If we can agree on anything (the riff goes), it\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2434,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2434","url_meta":{"origin":6997,"position":1},"title":"Wine is Food Or Drug?","author":"Will Clower","date":"March 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(See Video Below and forward to your friends.) That depends ... on whether you live in the US or the Mediterranean region. For us, it's considered to be a drug; an intoxicant; a dangerous temptation. For them, it's a food that goes with your meal. Watch the video and let\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bookmark and Share","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/v2\/lg-share-en.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2519,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2519","url_meta":{"origin":6997,"position":2},"title":"Wine and Breast Cancer","author":"Will Clower","date":"August 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Wine is a funny thing. At one time, wine was said to be awful for you. But Italian scientists who were drinking the wine outlived everyone and so they were able to get the last word in ... wine's great for you as long as you don't overconsume it. With\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2715,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2715","url_meta":{"origin":6997,"position":3},"title":"Red Red Wine","author":"Will Clower","date":"September 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"People who drink to forget might actually succeed if they just stopped at a couple.In fact, red wine helps to reinforce the neural circuits that control negative emotional memory (Now See Here). Of course, having more than just a couple is a physiological disaster across the board, but drinking in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Brain\"","block_context":{"text":"Brain","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?tag=brain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2675,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=2675","url_meta":{"origin":6997,"position":4},"title":"Red Wine Pill: FDA takes a closer look","author":"Will Clower","date":"October 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Good for the FDA. They stepped up and smacked down a Georgia-based supplements manufacturer for making unfounded (read, rediculous) drug claims about one of its resveratrol pills. Read the report here. The FDA told the company, Natural Biology, that its Red Wine Resveratrol pills were being marketed as a cure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1868,"url":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?p=1868","url_meta":{"origin":6997,"position":5},"title":"The Internal SPF. The Top 5 Countdown of Best Foods. Number 2.","author":"Will Clower","date":"June 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Let me just be the bearer of good news here. Wine is good for you (Lawyer-Induced Disclaimer: if you don\u2019t overconsume it). We knew this already, but some of the same wine molecules that turn out to be great for your heart, are also beneficial to your skin. \u00a0 The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles"","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/?cat=494"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-wine.jpg?fit=640%2C455&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-wine.jpg?fit=640%2C455&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/red-wine.jpg?fit=640%2C455&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6997"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7292,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6997\/revisions\/7292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mymedwellness.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}