Wine As an Antidepressant
Wine as an antidepressant? Drinking wine, in moderation, limits the risk of depression… This is the result of a recent Spanish study published in a medical journal.
Depression along with other psychological problems and high alcohol consumption are linked in many studies. You’ll also see other studies proving the health benefits of moderate wine drinking, particularly cardiovascular health.
Spanish researchers have used a very large cohort to examine the connection between moderate alcohol consumption and depression. This cohort is part of an extensive research that aimed to evaluate how Mediterranean diet could be helpful in preventing cardiovascular diseases. This study found that the Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in elderly men and women by about 30%. The participants didn’t have any problems of alcohol or mental health at the beginning of the study.
A higher consumption of alcohol was associated with being of male gender, smoking, the practice of physical activity, being married and higher food intake. The results also show that there is an inverse relationship between alcohol intake and the cases of depression. Wine is the most widely used alcoholic beverage.
The researchers could not say much about the consumption of alcoholic beverages like beer due to the small number of participants. The lowest levels of depression were observed in the group of people who drank 2-7 glasses of wine per week. These results continued to be significant even after the adjustment for social factors, lifestyle, food, smoking and marital status.
Keep in mind that this is an observational study that can’t build cause and effect relationships. All it says is it is possible that moderate wine drinkers are less exposed to depression. And we can easily find the results of other studies that found connection between depression and regular alcohol consumption. But the Spanish researchers make it clear that those studies have mainly concentrated on other types of alcoholic beverages and more on excessive consumption.
How alcohol affects your brain is still unclear. We do know that alcohol increases the release of serotonin by the central nervous system. When the serotonin- the chemical messenger in the brain levels are too low, it usually means an increased risk of depression and mental issues.
The way the Mediterranean diet includes a bit of wine with meals could help good mental health. The wine- especially the red variety contains phenolic compounds which have a protective effect on the brain. And a Mediterranean diet supplemented with olive oil and nuts promotes great cognitive abilities.
So we could say that, if you drink red wine moderately- a glass per day with meals, as part of the Mediterranean diet, you may be less likely to be depressed. But we certainly do not recommend anybody to start drinking and become addicted to alcohol.
Not everyone can control the amount they drink, they simply do not know where to stop and the results of such behavior is catastrophic for the overall health- physical and mental of that person. So moderation is the key here, if you see yourself starting to drink more than a glass of wine a day, you should simply stop drinking and focus more on practices like meditation, exercise and yoga to help relax yourself.
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