14 DAY TRIAL // Time to bring out the corkscrews. Researchers writing in the journal BMC Medicine say that, according to their investigations, drinking helps improve mental health. More precisely, it lowers a person's risk to suffer from depression.
However, there is one catch: wine and other alcoholic beverages can only help people's mood perk up provided that they are enjoyed in moderation.
Thus, whereas moderate alcohol intake can fight back depression, heavy drinking is said to foster several mental health problems.
Sources tell us that, in order to determine how moderate drinking affects a person's state of mind, researchers closely monitored some 5,500 individuals for up to 7 years.
The people taken into consideration for this study were either light or moderate drinkers.
Their ages ranged between 55 and 80 years old, and none of them had ever suffered from depression prior to their being enrolled in this study.
What's more, none had ever experienced any alcohol-related problems.
After spending 7 years collecting data concerning the physical and mental health of these people, the researchers found that the moderate drinkers, i.e. the volunteers who drank some 2-7 small glasses of wine on a weekly basis, were less likely to be depressed than the light drinkers.
These findings held true even after variables such a smoking behavior, marital status, diet and lifestyle were taken into consideration.
Professor Miguel A. Martínez-González at the University of Navarra, Spain believes that wine can fight back depression due to the fact that it contains chemical compounds that have a protective effect on various brain areas.
It is likely that these compounds are the very same that have previously been argued to stave off coronary heart disease.
“Lower amounts of alcohol intake might exert protection in a similar way to what has been observed for coronary heart disease. In fact, it is believed that depression and coronary heart disease share some common disease mechanisms,” the Professor pointed out.