Let's start this informative article off with some important, but boring facts on heart disease: 70.1 million people in the United States suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The estimated cost of these CVD cases for 2005 is nearly $393.5 billion. Due to this high cost of treating CVD a huge amount of money is directed each year towards research into CVD prevention.

If you're still reading this, there is one area of the heart disease puzzle that is quite interesting and has gotten a lot of media attention -- alcohol consumption. We've all heard that wine has a beneficial effect on health, despite the fact that heavy drinking has been linked to such negative health effects as hypertension, sudden cardiac death, and liver cancer. I even read that Bay Area rapper E-40 has switched from his favorite drink, Num Num juice (7-up, cranberry, and vodka) to wine because he has heart problems. Now I was willing to let the general public go ignorant, but E-40 without his Num Num juice is just wrong. So here is my public service announcement: not only is wine associated with a reduced risk of CVD, but beer and hard alcohol are too!

An unexplained stronger inverse correlation between alcohol consumption and CVD seen in those who live in Mediterranean countries led many researchers to believe that the red wine drank by this population had a more beneficial effect on CHD than beer or sprits. Support for this hypothesis stems from the fact that the polyphenols in red wine have been shown to reduce atherosclerosis in mice by suppressing vascular endothelial growth factor. Polyphenols are believed to have a special impact on atherosclerosis due to their activity in inflammatory processes of blood vessels. While there are a plethora of studies and newspaper articles supporting the beneficial aspects of wine, other studies have actually found wine to be the least effective alcohol in preventing CHD. In fact, beer has been shown to have a larger antioxidant effect per day than wine. The grape derived alcohol may also be less beneficial due to gender. Beer appears to be more helpful with females, whereas wine seems to have a more beneficial role in males.

The inconsistency of the data on which type of alcohol is most beneficial in reducing the risk of CHD led a group of researchers to write a review article on the subject, synthesizing the information from peer-reviewed publications into one summary of the current story. What these scientists found, was that while ecological studies suggest that wine is more effective at preventing CHD than beer or spirits, the case-control studies don't seem to find that one type of alcohol is better than another. In fact out, of the 12 case-control studies, four found that wine was the most beneficial, four found that beer was the most beneficial, and four found that spirits were the most beneficial. The fact that the data are so drastically inconsistent leads to the belief that no type of alcohol is better at protecting against coronary heart disease than another. So, drink up!

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