Even if you don’t eat an apple a day to keep the healthcare practitioner away, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have something else that can boost your health: a daily, desirable beverage that helps your immune system beat off the colds, flu and other illnesses that go from house to house each year.
The magic elixir consists of alcoholic beverages. But you have to hold down your consumption to the equivalent of one or two daily glasses of wine. Moderation, their research shows, helps the immune system.
“It has been known for a long time that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower mortality,” says researcher Ilhem Messaoudi. “Our study, conducted on non-human primates, shows for the first time that voluntary moderate alcohol consumption boosts immune responses to vaccination.”
The scientists studied the effects of alcohol consumption on the immune systems of rhesus macaques for more than a year. The animals that consumed large amounts of alcohol suffered lower immunity and were more susceptible to infection. But the moderate primate drinkers enjoyed improved immune responses.
Messaoudi says: “This supports what has been widely believed for some time: moderate ethanol consumption results in a reduction in all causes of mortality, especially cardiovascular disease. As for excessive alcohol consumption, our study shows that it has a significant negative impact on health.”
Messaoudi warns that if alcoholism runs in your family, abstinence may be your best policy for better health and control of your life. But if you can moderate your drinking, it can help your health.
“If you have a family history of alcohol abuse, or are at risk, or have been an abuser in the past, we are not recommending you go out and drink to improve your immune system!” Messaoudi says. “But for the average person that has, say, a glass of wine with dinner, it does seem, in general, to improve health, and cardiovascular function in particular, and now we can add the immune system to that list.”
