The healing effect of wine has been known since ancient times. The first medical treatises described his tonic and antiseptic properties. In the middle Ages, wine is used as a cure for lethargy, diarrhea, and even as an anesthetic during childbirth. Only in the XX century, the public first learned about the detrimental effects of alcohol on the brain, liver, and pancreas. Moreover, due to the production and transport of injury authorities were forced to fight against drunkenness and alcoholism. True, the happiness, the prohibitive measures eventually transformed into propaganda of moderate consumption.

To discuss the beneficial properties of wine back in 1991, when a professor at the University of Bordeaux Serge Renaud first introduced the term "French paradox." It is no secret that the French, extensive use of animal fats in their traditional cooking, does not suffer by coronary heart disease. The researchers suggested that the relatively low prevalence of cardiovascular diseases are due to the abundance of red wine, is always accompanied by a meal.

The disclosure of this fact in the U.S. has led to an increase in sales of red wine by 44% and, of course, gave rise to much speculation. It got ridiculous. Some winemakers have tried to force the government to introduce a specialized labeling bottles, which would formally reaffirm the usefulness of their products to health. Even quality newspapers blossomed headings "A bottle a day keeps the doctor away". However, after these revelations even greedy for sensations journalists prefer to stop.

However, any, even the most absurd, the publication can not be born in a empty place. Since then, the author of numerous works on medicine, chemistry, biology, trying to prove or disprove various conjectures about the healing effect of wine, and most importantly - to explain in detail the mechanisms of its positive effects.

Thus, researchers from Quebec's Laval University found that the wine has a beneficial effect in diseases of the gums, effectively protects teeth from decay, kills bacteria streptococcus, staphylococcus groups. The joint report of the Italian Institute of Health, University of Rome and the National Research Committee, said that red wine contains compounds that can block the influenza virus and prevent it from mutation. American scientists from Tufts University in Boston, said that wine increases bone mineral density. A staff of the University of Western Australia have shown that alcohol reduces the risk of impotence.

But, perhaps, the greatest number of dissertations at the effect of wine on a tumor. Of the Stockholm Karolinska Institute, Center for Cancer Fred Hutchinson (Fred Hutchinson) from Seattle, University of California and many other medical and research centers to establish the relationship between the consumption of wine and reduce the risk of cancer of the kidneys, prostate, lung. And at the center of radiation oncology at the medical department of the University of Rochester have recognized that wine improves radio-and chemotherapy.

Despite prevailing misconceptions, wine is not able to display the radionuclides from the body, but due to its antioxidant properties can reduce the harmful effects of radiation.