h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thank you all for your comments!!!!
I had so many other things on my mind the last weeks, but I will try to consider your comments and work on the article within the next days!!
Thanks a lot!!!!!

Hello again,

Even though this article – as the title already suggests – clearly focuses on the benefits of red wine, you are right to suggest that more negative effects (such as alcohol abuse, death due to alcohol, and alcohol during pregnancy) at least need to be mentioned!

For this reason I changed some parts of the article and added some more information.

I apologise that it took so long and hope that you like the new article! However, I am looking forward to further suggestions and criticism as well..

Quite a change!

Be sure to read all the responses to the original version, though. I'm fairly sure that the sources in the bibliography can be mentioned, but most probably won't appear in the final piece.

A51943944

Best of luck with the rest of Peer Review!

A couple of things I noticed on a very quick read-through, Resibauer:




Reveratrol is a compound, not an element. Better to put 'This is mostly due to one element...'



> FOETAL Alcohol syndrome.

A

This doesn't tie up. On the assumption that a glass of wine equals 125 ml ( as stated later in the paragraph), and that red wine is typically 12-14% AbV, and given that the density of alcohol is in the region of 0.8 g/ml, then:

@ 12% AbV, two glasses equals 125 x 2 x 0.12 x 0.8 = 24g
@ 14% AbV, two glasses equals 125 x 2 x 0.14 x 0.8 = 28g

So either 30-50g is too high, or two glasses is too low

In this 'The Healthy Amount' paragraph, I don't think it makes it clear enough that different reports give wildly different recommendations which is in part why the public is generally uncertain of what their 'safe' limits should be. Even those who can tell you that the 'safe limit' for men is about 21 units, don't really know what this means in terms of alcoholic beverage drunk. Printing the number of units, say 2.1 units, on a bottle or can of beer/lager is a step in the right direction but it needs people to have a lot more everyday familiarity with 'alcohol units'. However, and more relevant to this entry, what would be the value of printing the alcohol content in units (9.75 on average) on a bottle of wine.

Since out of interest I started keeping a log of my own alcohol consumption, I've been rather surprised by how much I underestimated the figure beforehand.

This is also true of ciggies and sweets


Noth€r

Thank you BigAl for calling attention to the mistakes

h5ringer, one of my sources said that 2 glasses of wine would be about 30-50g of alcohol - In this case my source seems to be unreliable. Thanks a lot for your explanation!

Just noted I made one myself in the above posting

"Reveratrol is a compound, not an element". > Better to put 'This is mostly due to one COMPONENT...

yes I did wonder what you were on about there Al

Anybody got any more thoughts on this one?

This entry does have some very serious issues and, although it is clearly written with good intentions, much of it is very misleading at best, and at worst dangerously wrong.

I'm not an expert in this field, so feel free to get a Scout who knows his stuff (AlexAshman and Z both spring to mind) to check this out as well if you wish. However, I've looked into some of the claims made and tracked down abstracts of some of the studies quoted here, and I'm certain that my assertions here are correct.

First of all, an easy one: the French Paradox. As the name suggests, it's a paradox and any explanation you might read is still only a theory. The one given here is just one of many possible explanations.

'While the amount of red wine that should be drunk per week is disputable, it is a fact that the beverage has positive impacts on our health. This is mostly due to one component, which is probably the most important ingredient of red wine: the polyphenol resveratrol.' And we go on through all the great stuff that resveratrol (and therefore red wine) can do. Let's look at one; the 'precautionary effect against cancer'.

Yikes.

Resveratrol has had some encouraging results - in lab tests. There haven't been any completed trials of resveratrol in the body yet, so nobody knows how effective it will be at anything. You'd have to pop 80 or so resveratrol pills a day to achieve the same anti-ageing effect that was demonstrated on tests on mice in labs - that's presuming it works in humans, which is by no means certain, and we don't know what side-effects they might have. If you were gullible, you might buy some pills: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_32/b4142000175800.htm but you'd be wise to read the NHS take on the chemical first, particularly the penultimate paragraph of http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/06june/pages/hearthealthandredwine.aspx

I digress. You'd think Cancer Research UK would have something to say about the great news that red wine might help prevent cancer, right?

They did.

http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/07/08/no-red-wine-doesn%E2%80%99t-prevent-breast-cancer/

'On its own, resveratrol may indeed reduce the risk of DNA damage, but red wine is rife with hundreds of other compounds, many of which may not be so beneficial. Obviously, the most important chemical in red wine is the alcohol itself.

In your body, alcohol is converted into a chemical called acetaldehyde, which is not the sort of thing you want sloshing around your body. It’s one of the reasons for the nasty hangover the morning after, and because it can damage DNA, it is one of the most likely explanations for the cancer-causing effects of alcohol.'

We could also look at the meta-analysis which pulled together the results of almost 100 studies and concluded that every 10g of alcohol (less than one glass) one has every day translated to a 10% greater risk of breast cancer:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16783604

These are not results from one, single, one-off study quoted in a newspaper once. These are systematic reviews of large numbers of studies that look at the methods each used and how well-designed they were.

The point I'm making is that you can't take one component of the wine and claim that the wine therefore takes on the properties of that component. That's like saying that all football supporters are lawyers because one was once spotted at a football match. Except more dangerous.

***

'Moreover, red wine reduces high blood pressure, has positive effects on digestion, reduces dental cavities, and supports stress relief.'

Alcohol raises blood pressure. Do you have anything to back this up?
St Paul apparently claimed that red wine helped his digestion, and it appears he's the source of this myth.
I can't find any link between red wine and dental cavities at all.
'Between 60-80% of Vietnam veterans treated for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have alcohol use disorders.' (From Alcoholics Anonymous: http://www.aa-uk.org.uk/alcoholics-anonymous-reviews/2008/04/alcohol-and-stress-is-there-connection.html ) Would you really recommend red wine for stress relief?

***

Several studies have been carried out, which highlight the red wine’s 'positive effects.'

'In 1997 an investigation on the effects of wine on Alzheimer’s disease confirmed that the daily consumption of two or three glasses of wine reduced the risk of the disease by 50%.'

http://www.nursingtimes.net/whats-new-in-nursing/specialists/older-people/moderate-alcohol-intake-cuts-dementia-risk/5003941.article

I couldn't find the study itself, but according to this and similar articles the consumption of 15 units or more a week (two or three a day) *doubles* the risk of dementia. For those drinking 5-14 units, the risk of dementia was significantly less. But only if you were over 75 and had no signs of the onset of dementia yet.


'Another surprising finding is that it does not only increase sexual desire, as a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2003 shows; it also increases the fertility: women that drink wine get pregnant faster.'

And this study published in the BMJ says that they get pregnant more slowly: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/317/7157/505

A Canadian study group discovered that the antioxidants which red wine contains help against periodontosis and other diseases of the mouth tract, as it reduces specific bacteria in the mouth.

Here's the abstract: http://jdr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/85/3/235 - and despite the reports surrounding the publication of the paper, it doesn't mention wine.


'One more medical benefit of wine was discovered by the Swedish medical doctor Henrik Källberg and his research group from the Karolinska-institute in Stockholm; while participants that drank more than three glasses of wine per week suffered much less frequently from rheumatoid arthritis, participants that drank less than three glasses, or no wine at all, suffered from the disease twice as much'

There's an excellent article on the NHS website about this very study: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/06June/Pages/Alcoholandarthritis.aspx

In it, it says:

'There is a danger that these results might be interpreted as a suggestion that increasing alcohol intake among non-drinkers is a reasonable choice if they want to prevent the development of arthritis. However, there are also well-known dangers from drinking too much, and these certain risks probably outweigh any uncertain benefit for reducing the risk of rheumatoid arthritis.'

***

I'm going to leave it there, but should finish up by saying that I adore red wine; at the same time, however, I'm under no delusions that it is pretty bad for one's health.

RIch raises some good points. I too raised my eyebrows at some of the assertions in the entry. It might be better to present the information as theorising rather than fact.

There are problems with getting an entirely 'scientific' view on this.

The French Paradox is unlikely to rest on one factor eg red wine consumption. And it's unlikely that research can separate out all the variables of genetics, diet, culture, lifestyle, age, gender, body weight, environment etc in order to get a *definitive* answer. But that also doesn't mean that for some people red wine isn't helpful to their health.

My concern would be that if red wine is beneficial in say France, that taking that idea and transposing it to all humans, especially in countries like the UK or NZ that have completely different drinking patterns and problems, is going to create more problems and inaccurate expectations.

But on the other hand, the idea of red wine being beneficial, alongside education about how the French drink, is partly responsible for some positive drinking changes in the drinking culture in NZ (don't know about other places).

What I am getting at is that it may be possible to combine science and culture in this entry to give a more rounded entry.


I do disagree with you Rich if you are saying that all red wine is damaging all the time (and all alcohol?).


*

All the links given at the bottom of the entry are either not in English or the links are broken

thank you Rich for taking the time and trouble to review this article

This is what I said in post 19

>>It is not a balanced view in my opinion and I would not like to see it in the guide

I stand by what I wrote there - but not being a scout at that time it was merely an observation.

Now, I would like to recommend that this article goes back to entry. The author has elvised ( he was part of the Austrian student contingent)

Having said all that - I do enjoy a glass of ,but don't kid myself that it is a wonder cure.

Agreed. Back to Entry

Thanks lil