red wine

Resveratrol can fight vision loss

Can a glass of wine protect your eyes and fight macular degeneration, as all the recent headlines claim?

Well... no... but pour yourself a glass and drink up -- it's good for you anyway -- while I pour some cold water on the new study.

This one, on mice, finds that resveratrol -- the so-called "red wine antioxidant" -- can block the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the eyes and even cause the ones that are already there to vanish.

Those abnormal blood vessels are what ultimately lead to macular degeneration, the number one cause of vision loss in people over the age of 55. It might also help fight other forms of vision loss, including diabetic retinopathy.

So far so good... so what's my beef with it? Nothing, if we're just talking about resveratrol.

But as far as red wine goes, you'd have to polish off several bottles a night to get amounts equivalent to what was used in the new study.

That won't protect your vision. That'll give you a permanent blur -- not to mention a wobble when you walk.

You see, the media can't resist hyping the "red wine" angle for any study on resveratrol. But truth is, red wine might be great for your health -- any alcohol is, in moderation -- but it's not a great source of resveratrol.

So if you want to get this or any other benefit of resveratrol, get your hands on a quality supplement. You'll find resveratrol sold on its own or as part of an antioxidant blend.

And feel free to wash it down with that glass of wine.

PS: If you really want to protect your peepers, take some fish oil. Fish oil can reduce the risk of both forms of AMD -- "wet" and "dry" -- by a third or more. Learn more in this free report from the Daily Dose archives.

Everyone knows that red wine is good for your heart. Studies have shown over and over again that a glass or two a day can lower your heart disease risk.

But a new study found that it won't do a thing for your blood pressure.

Shocking! How can something that's good for your heart NOT lower your blood pressure?!

For starters, it's because blood pressure is a bogus marker of heart health that's long been over-hyped simply as a way of selling more blood-pressure-lowering drugs.

But to add to that, this study is junk science of the worst kind.

Believe it or not, the 61 men and women in the month-long study on how red wine affects blood pressure didn't drink a single glass of wine in the process.

Instead, the volunteers were given daily servings of either a plain dairy drink, or one of two dairy drinks loaded with different amounts of the polyphenols found in red wine.

At the start of the study, the volunteers all had hypertension, with average BP levels of 145/86. And after four weeks of dairy drinks, nothing had changed.

But what'd they think would happen, some kind of blood pressure miracle?

Bottom line: Whether red wine lowers your blood pressure numbers or not-who cares? Studies have shown that it can boost your heart health, strengthen your immune system, reduce inflammation, boost your brain health, reduce your cancer risk, help you sleep better, and can even help you live longer.

I'll definitely drink to that.