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Many have said that red wine provides many benefits and could even help to prevent cancer. But is it really good for you? In this article, we discuss more on red wine and alcohol.

Alcohol effects on health
When you drink alcohol, it is eventually broken down to acetaldehyde, a compound that can cause cell and tissue damage in the body. Apart from that, drinking alcohol can also affect hormone levels and absorption of nutrients such as Vitamin B9. Not only that, the Third Expert Report published by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has concluded that there is strong evidence to prove that alcohol can cause many cancers, including mouth, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, colorectum, breast and liver cancers.

Possible Benefits: Resveratrol in Wine
Red wine contains many antioxidants, but one antioxidant, resveratrol, has gained much attention for its possible benefits, including lowering the risk of cancer. However, according to National Cancer Institute (NCI), resveratrol has yet to be proven to be effective in preventing cancer. In addition, the resveratrol levels in red wine is rather low so you would have to drink a lot of red wine for the resveratrol to be effective. By doing that, the above adverse effects to your body would have outweighed the benefits of resveratrol to your health. If you are merely looking to increase your resveratrol intake, you could eat more foods such as blueberries, cranberries, peanuts, cocoa and dark chocolate. And for other antioxidants found in red wine, you could eat more fruits, vegetables and nuts.

Recommendations
The American Cancer Society (ACS) has updated its guidelines to avoiding alcohol for cancer prevention, which is also consistent with what other organisations has recommended. However, for those who choose to drink, it would be good to limit their daily intake to no more than one drink for women and no more than two drinks for men.