Wine Not? The Low Down on Red Wine's Health Benefits

      

       Red red wiiinnnnnnne, you make me feel so...healthy? One of the hottest topics in nutrition today is red wine. It's hyped up as a heart healthy, life expectancy boosting, metabolism pumping magical elixir. Guzzle down the red stuff and you'll be fit as a fiddle, all while getting a nice buzz on! Say no more *Glug glug glug*
       You may want to slow down on that next glass, my friends. I want to get my "drank" on and be healthy too, but there's a lot more to this picture.

       Desperate winos Proponents of this latest health buzz rely on red wine's antioxidant content, particularly resveratrol, which is found in grape skins. Resveratrol's super power is explained by how it increases the concentration of HDL, which is the "good" fat that protects the heart by acting as a dumpster for LDL, the "bad" fat that deposits plaque on arterial walls. By altering your lipid profile, resveratrol protects you from heart disease. Antioxidants in general are our bodies' infantry that fight off free radicals, the damaging agents that cause cancer. Resveratrol also keeps you looking fine by maintaining collagen and elastin, the connective tissue proteins we need for youthful skin.  

Red Wine for Heart Health

       Seems like magic, doesn't it? When I first found out about this, I wanted to take a bath in red wine. Then I remembered that behind all magic is smoke and mirrors. So like always, I investigated further.

Get Ready For Some Cracks in this Story

       Resveratrol is the key for red wine's power. Do you know how much resveratrol there actually is in a glass of wine? 1 mg. Do you know how much wine has enough resveratrol to activate its effects?  60 LITERS. Even if you could hypothetically drink 60 liters of wine, all the health benefits will be drowned in 60 liters of alcohol, not to mention massive amounts of sugar and calories. 
       This brings me to my next point. We all have different definitions of what constitutes "a glass" of wine. For some it's a few sips, and for others it's a whole bottle. The actual amount is 5 oz. 

NOT 60 Liters

       It is recommended to drink wine in moderation. Again, we all have different concepts of "moderation." To drink in moderation, women can have no more than 1 glass per day and men can have no more than 2. Many people overdo it and drink 3-4 glasses a night thinking that they are boosting their health. 

NOT Moderation

       Besides the fact that there clearly isn't enough reservatrol in 1-2 glasses of red wine, this isn't a healthy addition to your diet. There's an average of 105 calories in each glass of wine. That's about 100-200 extra calories every day. The same amount calorie wise if you added a cookie to your daily diet. This will surely pack on the pounds. 

"No pants! Too much wine and now they don't fit."

       Let's not forget wine's main ingredient: ALCOHOL. Drinking too much alcohol has serious health consequences: liver damage, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, obesity, certain cancers, and cardiomyopathy (weakened heart muscles) to name a few. Furthermore, many conditions can be worsened by regular alcohol consumption, such as depression, high triglycerides, pancreatitis, liver disease, and congestive heart failure. 
       Resveratrol doesn't solely reside in red wine. It's also found in peanuts, blueberries, cranberries, and actual grapes that haven't been fermented into alcohol. So, you can obtain it through a healthier avenue. It's also available in a supplement form, but your body does not absorb most of the resveratrol in supplements, so it's of questionable benefit. 
       Furthermore, the studies that these big health claims are based on are quite dubious evidence. These studies show associations between wine consumption and health, they don't explain how any health parameters are improved. An association does not imply causation. There are a multitude of other factors that could have caused these results, such as the lifestyle of wine drinkers. It's unknown whether it is a component of the wine itself.
       What's even more unconvincing about these studies is that most of them used animals as subjects, not humans. Our bodies are not the same as those of lab rats. We respond differently to substances. The few studies that involved human subjects consisted of metabolically abnormal people (conditions such as diabetes or obesity). What works for them may not work for those of normal health. 
       I am in no way speaking poorly of wine. I am definitely a fan of  wine - sometimes a little too much, but that's a different story...
       Compared to other alcoholic beverages, it's more healthy considering its antioxidant content. No other alcoholic beverage has antioxidants. There could be benefits to drinking wine, but it's not a license to binge drink in the name of health. By all means, enjoy wine for the sake of catching a buzz, but don't chug it down to improve your lipid profile and heart health. Achieve these health benefits the right way: more fiber in the diet, fruits and vegetables, and increased physical activity. 
       If you're out on the town, go ahead and have a glass or two. Like I said, alcohol is fine in moderation. Just don't drink a bottle of wine and think you're being healthy- consuming a great amount of alcohol, sugar, and calories is never healthy.  

Being a lush is never healthy

       To go along with the theme of this post, I'll leave you with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXt56MB-3vc 
the music video of UB40's "Red Red Wine".
       **Side note, this song came out years before I was born, so I never actually saw the video. I'm not sure what shocked me more, finding out how flimsy red wine's health claims are or the fact that this song is by a bunch of White boys from Britain? Wtf? I always imagined a Jamaican, Bob Marley look alike behind this. Hah!  

NOT Bob Marley

Cheers,
Michelle

Juice Cleanse: A Fad that Needs to be Flushed

       It's another Monday morning in Los Angeles. I scroll through Instagram while waiting for my coffee to brew and see the usual pics: the selfies, the no filter, the food porn, etc. My friends complain that Instagram pics are always obnoxious and irritating. These pics never irritated me... until one day, a certain trend erupted: juice cleanses. All of a sudden, everyone started instagramming about their juice cleanse diet. 

#Juicing #Cleanse #Detox #FreshStart #HealthyLiving #Diet
 #NoPainNoGain #ReFresh #ByeByeToxins #IHaveNoIdeaWhatI'mDoing

       Why am I so vehemently against juice cleanses? They're complete and utter nonsense. That's why. 
       People go through with these cleanses to lose weight, detox their bodies, and absorb nutrients that they don't obtain from their normal diets. These seem like sound reasons to go through with a diet. Now let me ask you, can you tell me how a juice cleanse actually delivers all that it promises? I've posed this question to numerous people when they're on a cleanse and their answers are always something along the lines of "Umm, the company that makes it told me it works and my friends are doing it...I think it's a good idea."
       So, your reasoning is that someone told you to and a bunch of other people are doing it too? Do you remember what happened the last time a bunch of people drank something because someone else told them to? It was the Jonestown cult massacre of 1978 when 900 people drank cyanide laced Kool Aid and died. Hope that puts it into perspective.

"Oh, yeaahh!"...Oh Dear...Oh No

       The makers of juice cleanses tout lofty claims: weight loss, detoxifying the body, mental clarity, improved digestion, the list goes on. I must admit, it's a seductive and appealing concept. All you do is drink juice numbered 1-6 each day. They took all the hard work out of dieting. No cooking, no food prep, nothing. Just pop open the fridge, drink your meal, and lose weight. Who wouldn't want to reach for a miracle button like this?
       During the cleanse, your caloric intake is at a mere 1,000-1,200 calories per day, consisting of fruit and vegetable juice. There is also an occasional nut milk thrown in for a small dose of fat and protein, but besides that it's just fruit and veggie juice. It's essentially a starvation diet. 
       "But Michelle, all diets are hard" you say. I agree, weight loss is certainly not easy, but it should be done through a healthy method that actually leads to results. Juice cleanses deliver zero results and are dangerous to your health. 

Can this be the miracle in a bottle you're looking for? Keep Reading.

       You're probably still sipping the Kool Aid at this point. Let's go through the claimed benefits of cleanses and I'll explain how none of it adds up. 

       The first and foremost defense of juicing is that ingesting fruits and vegetables in juice form allows the body to obtain the maximum amount of vitamins and minerals possible. FALSE. In order for your body to obtain vitamins and minerals from produce, you need the fiber, which was eliminated in juicing, to absorb them. Produce are meant to be consumed in whole form: skin, pulp, flesh, roughage, and all. This is where most of the "good stuff" lies. For example, the white pulp in oranges holds massive amounts of flavanoids, which have great antioxidant power, but that was all thrown out to get the juice, oops. 

       Juicing essentially strips produce of fiber, nutrients, and most vitamins and minerals, leaving you with sugar water. Yes, it's fructose, a natural fruit sugar, but it's still sugar and a lot of sugar at that. When you drink a bottle of juice, there is not as much plant fiber as there should be when consuming this amount of fructose, so your body absorbs the sugar much more easily, causing your blood sugar to sky rocket and then crash abruptly. This is especially dangerous considering that many of those who undertake a cleanse are overweight or obese and may be pre-diabetic. Frequent shifts in blood sugar can shove a pre-diabetic into full on diabetes. 

Blood sugar roller coaster. Cost of admission: Too high.

       This violent fluctuation in blood sugar causes you to feel fatigued and dizzy. That's not quite the "mental clarity" you were promised. In fact, the components of a juice diet hinder normal brain functioning. Since you are eating at most 1,200 calories, while an adult should consume an average of 2,000, your body is in starvation mode. Without a suitable intake of calories and nutrients, your body breaks down its fat into ketones, a form of low grade energy that fails to fuel your brain, making it difficult to focus on even the simplest daily tasks.

       Your blood sugar isn't the only thing subject to fluctuations. Without protein, you are deprived of amino acids, which are required by neurotransmitters to uphold your emotional balance, launching you into the throws of mood swings. 

       Not only will you be cranky, but you'll also be hungry- VERY HUNGRY. Forget the fact that you're taking in barely over half the amount of calories you require, you're also missing out on the two biggest hunger satiating factors: fiber and protein. You need ample fiber and protein in your diet to feel full.

You on a juice cleanse.

      The fatigue, dizziness, and hunger will make you feel drained, but the osmotic diarrhea you will be pounded with will LITERALLY drain you, and I mean DRAIN. Juice is chocked full of carbohydrates, which absorb water in your body, so you will need to be near a bathroom at all times. This does not sound comfortable. You went on this diet to lose weight and make yourself look more appealing. Please, tell me how appealing you are now that you've turned yourself into an upside down volcano. I'm just going to let that mental image sit with you. 

       The laxative effect of a juice cleanse is harmful to your digestive functioning. After your digestive system receives an added "push" from the juice, your body figures that it no longer needs to expend energy on digestion and concentrates on other areas, which causes you to feel constipated after the cleanse is over. Sometimes, irreversibly. 

       The proponents of cleanses state that putting your gut at "rest" from breaking down solid food revitalizes it. NEGATIVE. Our intestines actually work optimally with a constant flow of nutrient and fiber dense food. For example, the intestine requires glutamine, a breakdown product of protein, for nourishment. The bacteria lining the intestine need plant fiber to reinforce and replenish the intestinal cells in order to prevent foreign bacteria, chemicals, or food from leaking into the blood stream. A gut "rest" does anything but revitalize, it can even lead to irreparable nerve and muscle damage of gut tissue. 

       The website of a particular juicery advises customers that any dizziness, fatigue, hunger, and diarrhea are all signs that the cleanse is working. The worse you feel, the more toxins you had in your body to clean out. All this pain is just your body fighting to purify you. Last time I checked, this is supposed to be a diet, not an exorcism. No weight loss method should put the body in such a volatile state. 

"The power of juice compels you!"

       Speaking of "cleansing," there is no scientific evidence that juicing can detoxify your body. In fact, the human body's organ systems have evolved over the past 2.3 million years to expel toxic substances. Your liver, kidney, and intestine have detox covered and do not need any help from juice. If anything, a cleanse is toxic. In starvation mode, your body breaks up your muscle mass for energy into ammonia and uric acid, two toxic compounds, and flushes them into the blood stream. In addition, the previously discussed blood sugar fluctuations can damage the kidney's ability to filter blood. Thank goodness your organs are there to detox you from the effects of your "detox."

       After reading all of this, I know what last shred of hope you're holding onto. You just want to lose weight. If you can drop ten pounds, you'll unabashedly take the risks. You will drop ten pound or so, there's no denying that. Of course you're going to lose weight when depriving yourself of fat/protein and eating only 1,000 calories. Oh, and guess what? You're going to gain back fifteen. A juice cleanse wreaks havoc on your metabolism. In starvation mode, your body is preparing itself to be more thrifty with food that will be ingested later so that calories will not be burnt up as easily as before. Like I said, the human body has evolved a system of checks and balances to keep everything in order. That includes slowing down your metabolism when an extreme caloric reduction occurs to prevent starvation. As soon as you start eating normal food, your body will hold onto those calories. You'll gain all that weight back and then some. Repeated cycling through weights can permanently slow the metabolism, making it even more difficult to achieve and maintain weight loss. 

Right back where we started from 

       Many people notice that their body feels more "flabby", for lack of a better word, after a juice cleanse. The new flab is explained by how your body has depleted all of its primary energy stores during this extreme low calorie diet and has turned to breaking down muscle mass for fuel. The ratio of fat to lean body mass increases, causing one to see "pooch" in areas they did not see it before. Also, lean body mass is needed to help fuel the metabolism. Losing muscle mass slows your metabolism and stunts future weight loss attempts.

       There you have it: no detox, no improved digestion, no increased absorption of vitamins/minerals, no mental clarity, and certainly no weight loss. 

       Sorry to burst your bubble, but now you see that juice cleanses are useless as well as dangerous. There's nothing magical about juicing, which teaches us all a valuable lesson: there's no magic in healthy eating. A balanced diet packed with whole grains, lean proteins, fruits, and vegetables is the way to look your best. Let me clarify that it is okay to drink juice as part of a meal, just not your entire meal. 

       Now that you have the scoop on juice cleanses, do yourself a favor: stop it. If you're on a cleanse now, chuck that bottle (preferably at the head of the juicery's creator) and eat a decent meal. How about some salmon, grilled veggies, and brown rice? At the very least, please stop posting pictures of your juice bottles to look cool.There's nothing cool about giving yourself diarrhea, none of us need or want to know that. 

       Thanks so much for reading, friends. With this knowledge, I hope that you "flush" the juice cleanse and opt for a balanced diet and exercise instead.

Until next week,

Michelle