The French Paradox – Red Wine / Heart Disease.mpg

Red Wine for your Health – documentary

To any story we broadcast this year as we reported in November there are several things that contribute to heart attacks diet of course is one of them so why is it that the French who eat as much or more fat than we do suffer fewer heart attacks even though they smoke

More and exercise less all you have to do is look at the numbers if you’re a middle-aged American man your chances of dying of a heart attack are three times greater than a Frenchman of the same age so it’s obvious that the French are doing something right something

Americans are not doing the answer to the paradox might be found here in Lyon the city prides itself as the gastronomic capital of France food and it’s preparation are almost an obsession chefs have the stature of quarterbacks but their preparations would send the American Heart Association into cardiac arrest

Butter goose fat lard double cream are the staples of a decent day’s cooking Leo a city of just over 400,000 has 2600 restaurants 2,300 meat shops a hundred and fifteen wine stores shopping is not a bore people do it with gusto and cake find your chicken of the Leone market

And lead to a lecture on poultry chicken feet skin texture and foot formation each bird is serial numbered and recorded just like a Rolls Royce it’s all academic because the bird will soon be drenched in butter and cream and go the way of all farm flesh the French

Diet the paradox has begun to intrigue foreign researchers among them dr. Curt Ellison a cardiologist and professor at the School of Public Health at Boston University has kelps dr. Ellison is launching a major study in four countries comparing three nations diets over a one-year period with the French

He is in Lyon to consult with French scientists and to have the odd good meal I was just looking in this restaurant we’re having lunch this is something you just wouldn’t find in an American restaurant Elena’s salad bowl which is pig’s head pate with parsley black pudding which

You know it’s very fat and potatoes in oil double fat sliced tripe so she ate with onions and a hot sausage with lentils and potatoes in law this is routine stuff the farmers have been eating this for years everything a very high fat diet it seems and yet they

Don’t get heart to these if we took the same diet put it into an American you know we would all be suffering from the carnage at an early age there’s something about the presence seems to be protecting them and we’re not sure what it is we’re looking for dr. Ellison’s

Reason for coming to Lyon is to study the findings that insert the French equivalent of the National Institutes of Health he met with dr. Monique osteoid Duma a nutritionist from Paris and the head of Leon Center dr. Sarah know who for 15 years has been searching Italy

Answered to the French paradox do you think that the long history of French gastronomy of the respect that French have the interest the fact has for food has something to do with well that’s that could be first of all I think the people pay more attention to the food

Whether it is fresh ready they even they go to the the markets you know to but to purchase really fresh food and consequently the meal itself it’s something that takes time to prepare text time to eat and the attitude toward the meal is somewhat different and I’m unconvinced that’s something that should

Be taking into consideration dr. sta Duma feels that the difference in eating habits the fact that the French do not eat between meals has something to do with the paradox in France we have just females and that’s all and the main one is village in the United States annually people are

Going to eat something every two hours they are eating at breakfast at 10 o’clock at noon at two o’clock at four o’clock doctor sta Duma does have a point Americans do eat often and quickly and everywhere the fast-food industry thrives on our appetite for food that

Requires no knife no fork no spoon one New York Emporium papaya king boasts that the average time a customer spends ordering pain and consuming is three point five minutes and this way of having something to eat over day I wonder if there’s not one of the explanations of the French paradox we

Still have problems with the United States because the very large percentage of our food is prepared as manufactured as processed and we get it out of a cellophane package or a box or something so we and we reuse that that very quickly and our microwave so it’s

Difficult to get you know to go out to the supermarket market and but people don’t do it they don’t do it’s not difficult for industry to put all four good things in the package most American nutritionists agree that dairy fat including cheese is a major enemy to a

Healthy heart and here is the paradox again in France there are cheese shops everywhere and hundreds of varieties and textures from triple creme to soft breeze and Kenan Bey each French man woman and child consumes a full 40 pounds of cheese each year does cheese deserve its bad reputation dr. Renault

Says no it is milk we must be careful of surveys in different countries show a very very strong relationship between the intake of milk and the multi-turret from call heart disease why for cheese it’s there is no relationship at all dr. Renault believes is the difference in

The nature of calcium in milk in cheese in cheese perhaps because of fermentation the calcium neutralizes the fat combines with it and it is then excreted by the body rather than absorbed whole milk he says promotes heart disease because the calcium will not combine with the fat which is

Absorbed into the bloodstream he’s tested his theory on rats and here is our estate with conquering camembert with milk the city’s first two cages are camembert and his one are fed meal in comparable amount of fat and calcium and his proof is in the rat doodles the cheese fed rats had eliminated virtually

All the dairy fed he also found that in dissecting the animals the milk that rats arteries were clogged while the others were clear it’s a wonderful theory he has he is the only one who’s really doing research on this right now as far as I’m aware we’re not doing a

New research on this in the United States right now this is something new and it’s a very exciting possibility to help explain this paradox yet if you go to the North in France there is not that much olive oil they’re using more butter no enrollment of course and yet the

Rates are still lower there and higher why are the rates in little they are lower than in Boston well my explanation is of course the consumption of our cold there has been for years the belief by doctors in many countries that alcohol in particular red wine good uses the

Risk of heart disease now it’s been all but confirmed the wine apparently affects the platelets the smallest of the blood cells it is platelets that cause blood to clot they prevent bleeding but they also cling to rough fatty deposits on the artery walls clogging and finally blocking the artery

And causing a heart attack the wine has a flushing effect it removes platelets from the artery wall so the answer to the riddle the explanation of the paradox may lie in this inviting glass it’s it’s well documented that trade a an intake a moderate intake of alcohol prevents Faulconer heart disease by as

Much as 50% I mean this is 50% 50% I mean there is no other drug that’s being so efficient and moderate and take of alcohol of course the problem is that people are tempted to go beyond these moderate intake when you say moderate intake of alcohol with meals what do you

Mean I mean a few glasses of wine per day if she’s just sticking to that you will never get frank you will never get in a apparently any adverse effect of this intake of alcohol alcohol is a drug and as any drug it has been it has to be

Given at a proper dosage the intake of wine per capita in France is higher than anywhere else in the world the United States intake is among the lowest wine in France is part of every lunch and dinner and there is a dizzying variety to choose from for everyday consumption

Families simply drop into a filling station for a weeks or days supply a number of American doctors none of whom would go on the record told me that if it was up to them they would get rid of milk and school lunchrooms and exchange it for watered wine the American milk

Haven’t they said is priming our 12-year olds for heart attacks at 50 and how old were you when you started to have a glass of wine with lunch or dinner oh that’s a fair a young at the age of 10 12 but it was a little bit of wine and a

Large amount of water did you drink milk as a child not after the age of five or six I think he feels very strongly that wine taking the moderation a couple of glasses with each meal really is the answer but he’s hesitant to come out and say as you are

Too why is that like I think as a physician we’re all very much aware of the tremendous problem with alcohol abuse with excess alcohol use and we even know that from the heart point on you if you if you if you have your three bottles of wine and all on Saturday

Night it’s very bad for your platelets it’s very bad for your car there is it’s bad for your for your health in general as well as the health of others if you happen to be driving on the other hand if you spread out it’s resolved and had

Half a bottle every day with your meal over several hours it may well be that you protecting the heart by decreasing the stickiness of your platelets if the United States is among the lowest consumers of red wine in the world it is among the highest in victims of

Heart attack about 1 million deaths per year and the section of the country that consumes the least wine is known by doctors as stroke alley the so called Bible Belt which ignores the admonition of st. Paul to Timothy use a little wine for thy stomachs sake and thine other

Infirmities it makes it less likely for you to develop thrombosis of clot and have your ill coronary the number of mechanisms that have been shown for for moderate amounts of alcohol and that may be one of the fact I think it probably will be one of the factors whether

That’s the predominant factor is surely not the only factor that’s making it possible for the French to eat as you see they’re eating and yet and not have heart attacks if you make that study or if a study is made that proves more or less conclusively that wine with meals

Is a magic bullet of protection against heart disease you think that the American medical establishment and the American government the National Institutes of Health Reserve we’re gonna buy that I’m not setting policy I’m a researcher I’m not polished and I go but I think we should have the information

If it is part of it part of the explanation I think we should know it so I will get the answers now let you talk with a policy makers to see how they deal with it the evidence of the benefits of alcohol in moderation keeps growing as part of a continuing study

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health looked at 44,000 Americans between 40 and 75 years old and found that those who drank light to moderate amounts of alcohol had a five to 40 percent less chance of developing heart disease moderate is defined as two drinks a day