A study published in the American Journal of Medicines said German researchers have found out that one can reduce short-term adverse impacts of smoking by drinking red wine prior to it. Cigarettes can lead to various health ailments like cellular aging, systemic and vascular inflammation and even endothelial damage, which refer to the damage of the inner lining of blood vessels.
The research that was carried out by a team from the University of Saarland, Homburg, Germany found that red wine is capable of triggering the construction of the endothelium-dependent relaxation. Nitric oxide is believed to improve heart function in the coronary arteries which supply oxygen to the heart; this led to the assumption that red wine got a high phenol concentration.
The Science Daily quoted the lead study investigator, Viktoria Schwarz, MD, from the University of Saarland, Homburg, Germany as saying that "However, sparse data exist on the short term potential vasoprotective effects of red wine in smoking healthy individuals. The aim of our study was to investigate the acute vascular effects of red wine consumption prior to 'occasional lifestyle smoking' in healthy individuals."
"We found evidence that pre-consumption of red wine prevented most of the vascular injury caused by smoking," Dr. Schwarz added.
According to Medical Xpress, the researchers analysed the biochemical process in the blood and vessels of 20 non-smoking participants, who were involved in the study. These participants agreed to smoke three cigarettes voluntarily and 10 of them had red wine, which had 0.75 percent of alcohol intoxication, before smoking. The blood and urine samples of these participants were collected before the experiment and it was carried on till 18 hours after smoking.
"We observed acute proinflammatory changes, namely, neutrophilia, leukocytosis, upregulated levels of IL-6 in serum, and enhanced messenger RNA expression of IL-6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha. Our study adds to the present evidence that the proinflammatory effects in nonsmokers with 'occasional lifestyle smoking' could be prevented by red wine consumption," Dr. Schwarz said.
However, the results of this study were found to be related to only young and healthy non-smokers. The researchers did not provide any confirmation about the impact when it comes to chronic, sick and old smokers.
