Wine Consumption and Stroke


May was National Stroke Month, so we figured, better late than never, we’d refine the data on what is known and not known about the impact of moderate wine consumption on stroke incidence.


A stroke or cerebrovascular event is an interruption of  blood supply to any part of the brain.  The layout of the brain is novel in that a distribution of density of nerve cells or neurons is based on the role of that brain area, it’s function and history of use or disuse and whether the area is based on more basic vs. advanced function.  In that way, a stroke may impact the body’s function in a quite random way, based on the blood vessel or vessel’s distribution to a certain area.  To make it more complicated, for example, the somatosensory cortex may be schematized by what is known as an homunculus, in which a distorted scale model reflecting the relative distribution of nerves, function and density are represented shows a disproportionately large lips hands and feet relative to other body areas.

Strokes can generally be divided into ischemic  or  infarcted and hemorrhagic.  Ischemic insults occur if a blood clot or plaque of  locally forming atherosclerosis or migrating clot from an embolus/thrombus deprive blood supply to a certain area of the brain .  They may also occur with sudden diminished blood supply to the entire brain occurs, for example, due to dramatic loss in blood pressure.  Tissue damage and injury can result from accumulation of cell injury by-products.

Hemorrhagic strokes occur when bleeding as a result of brain trauma or weakening in a blood vessel wall occurs.  Deficits can be the result of deprivation of blood supply or mass effect from accumulation of blood. 

Present studies appear to stratify amounts of alcohol/wine consumption with relative risk of stroke,  as well as subclassify risks into types of stroke.  Gender based differences are addressed.   Attempts to isolate wine and alcohol’s subcomponents such as bioflavenols are still ambitious and laboratory based, failing to provide anthropomorphic data that can apply mouse data to humans.  Short-comings in all studies appear to accentuate basic deficits in the study of alcohol’s impact on health including limits to standardization of  amounts consumed, definitions of moderate and high/excessive and self-reporting bias.