Improve Your Liver Health with a Daily Glass of Wine

Moderate wine consumption never harmed anyone - in fact, a study carried out by UC San Diego School of Medicine shows that a daily glass of wine can be beneficial for your health, especially in combating Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. By comparison, people who never consume alcohol have double the chances of contracting NAFLD, while people drinking moderate amounts of beer and liquor are four times more likely to have the disease.

More than 40 million adults in the US suffer from NAFLD, out of which 5 percent of them eventually develop cirrhosis. The risk factors associated with this liver disease are rather similar to those of cardiovascular disease, like obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and high blood pressure. Previous studies showed that moderate alcohol consumption may also reduce the risks of developing heart diseases, but failed to take into consideration that such individuals also have elevated risks of manifesting NAFLD.

Therefore, the UC San Diego researchers tried to find out whether or not moderate alcohol consumption is as safe for the liver as it is for the heart.

"The results of this study present a paradigm shift, suggesting that modest wine consumption may not only be safe for the liver but may actually decrease the prevalence of NAFLD. The odds of having suspected NAFLD based upon abnormal liver blood tests was reduced by 50 percent in individuals who drank one glass of wine a day", said Jeffrey Schwimmer, associate professor of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition, Department of Pediatrics, UC San Diego School of Medicine and Director, Fatty Liver Clinic at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego.

The effects are independent of health status, age, sex, race, physical activity, body mass or diet, and cannot be obtained by drinking large quantities of wine.

"We want to emphasize that people at risk for alcohol abuse should not consider consuming wine or any other alcoholic beverage", said Schwimmer. Also, the study did not address the situation of people who already have this particular liver disease and are not supposed to drink any alcohol.

"Because this effect was only seen with wine, not in beer or liquor, further studies will be needed to determine whether the benefits seen were due to the alcohol or non-alcohol components of wine", Schwimmer said.