Red wine consumption can protect older people against physical fragility and impairment as well as poor mental health, according to research by Irish and US scientists.
The research, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, attributes the benefits of red wine in older people to the presence of flavonoids – organic compounds made by plants – which are also present in other food and drink.
“Higher intakes of tea, red wine, apples, blueberries, and oranges were all good,” said Prof Aedin Cassidy, of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).
“A glass (of red wine) a day as part of a diet high in plant rich foods is likely to be good for healthy ageing, but our results suggest that a variety of flavonoids are important.”
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The QUB researchers, working in collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and others based in Chicago, Perth and Copenhagen, set out to discover if a flavonoid-rich diet impacted measures of healthy ageing, notably frailty levels, physical function and mental health.
To do that, scientists examined data from two large studies, the Nurses’ Health Study (1990–2014) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (2006-2018), which followed 62,743 females and 23,687 males, all aged 60 or over.
Ageing, on a biological level, is the result of an accumulation of damage to cells and tissues that leads to a gradual decline in physical and mental capacities, increased susceptibility to diseases and death.
Although life expectancy has been increasing in many developed countries including Ireland – where male life expectancy, as measured in 2021, now stands at 80.5 years for men and 84.3 years for women – the proportion of years people can expect to stay in good health has not.
Scientists are keen to establish the factors that determine healthy ageing so that people can aim to increase the number of years where they are free of illness.
The study participants with the highest ‘flavodiet’ scores – who had higher intakes of red wine, tea, apples, blueberries and oranges – were found to have lower risk of age-related poor health.
The scientists compared those with highest flavodiet scores to those with the lowest. The former group were found to benefit across all three measures of healthy ageing. They had a 15 per cent lower risk of frailty, a 12 per cent lower risk of impaired physical function and a 12 per cent lower risk of poor mental health.
This study adds to growing evidence that flavonoids improve heart health and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and dementia.
“Studies suggest they reduce inflammation, improve our lipid and blood pressure levels, improve blood vessel function, improve glucose control and have neuroprotective effects,” said Prof Cassidy.
