Drinking wine can benefit diabetics, study shows

When Dr. Iris Shai was looking for participants for a two-year study on the effects of moderate wine consumption in diabetics, she didn’t exactly advertise that they would be drinking wine with their prescribed Mediterranean diets.

“We didn’t want that to be the reason that people participated,” said Shai, a researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Soroka Medical Center. “There was a very specific protocol for who could participate. They had to be 44 years old or older, we had to know their family histories.”

They also had to forego all junk food, eat lots of healthy fats and drink a glass of dry wine — from the Golan Heights Winery — every night at dinner, for two years.

“We didn’t want to see the immediate effects,” said Shai. “Just the long-term effects.”

After two years, the results were clear — drinking red wine is good for people with type 2 diabetes who need to manage their cholesterol and cardiac health.

The study, the first of its kind regarding alcohol, was conducted by Shai and her fellow BGU researchers, and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal. The researchers aimed to assess the effects of moderate alcohol consumption in diabetics, and to determine whether the type of wine made a difference.

According to the study, drinking red wine — in moderation, along with a healthy diet — helps improve overall metabolic profiles, increasing the good cholesterol and “modestly” decreases cardio-metabolic risk.

And while red and white wines didn’t affect change in blood pressure or liver function tests, they did help improve sleep quality, particularly compared with those who just drank water.

The two-year trial was performed on 224 controlled diabetes patients (aged 45 to 75), who generally refrained from drinking alcohol of any kind. They gradually began drinking wine, in three different groups, trying a five-ounce serving (150ml) of mineral water, white wine or red wine with dinner every night for two years.

During the study — which was performed in collaboration with colleagues from Harvard University, University of Leipzig in Germany and Karolinska Institute in Sweden — the subjects underwent an array of comprehensive medical tests, including continuous monitoring of changes in blood pressure, heart rate and blood glucose levels, as well as regular ultrasound and MRI tests.

The research group initially tried a pilot trial of four months before embarking on the two-year study. It was “true curiosity” that led them to the trial, said Shai.

A long-term trial is “the most fundamental way of asking questions about food and way of life,” she said, “and bringing it to science.”