Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan | Hacker News Reader

Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan

nytimes.com

13 pointsechair19 comments

They can say whatever they want with their fancy degrees in chemistry. I've always suspected that the real advantage of red wine is twofold:

1) Unlike other hard beverages, people tend to not abuse it, thus liver problems don't come up.

2) Like all hard beverages, it has the effect of mellowing you out. I probably spend at least 3-4 hours a day considerably less high-strung as a result of wine drinking. Stress is a killer. This kind of everyday moderate drinking has been the status quo throughout the Mediterranean for 1000s of years.

You drink wine every night? My schedule is far too buy to allow that...perhaps that is part of it? You are in a relaxed enough schedule to have some shutdown time every day?

I have a pretty busy schedule but a while back I started adjusting it to allow for time to actually sit down and eat a real dinner. My wife and I usually have 1 glass of wine each. It's a great way to reduce stress and enjoy life. It also helps me get out of the twitchy, burnt out feeling after writing code and drinking tea/coffee for 10 hours.

I go to bed about 3 AM, and there's not much pressing business after midnight.

Pouring a glass takes what, a minute?

My quality of work would suffer for those few hours, I wouldn't be able to go at 100%.

True, but I find my ability to code significantly diminished after even one glass. I'm all for finding some time to unwind with a glass when you can, however...

A first for me: the exact same post in 2 different threads.

This makes 2 NYT science articles in the HN Top Ten, one about cell phones and one about red wine, both guilty of the same common mistake in lay "science" news. So let's get this right, once and for all:

   CORRELATION != CAUSATION

Great. Now we'll have a steady dose of "cellphones are bad" and "red wine is good" from the mainstream pseudo news aftermarket for the next 3 days.

Thanks, New York Times...

"All the Science News That's Fit to Misprint"

"The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day." "[if other compounds are effective] a mere 5 glasses a day might be equivalent."

With those as the lower bounds for efficacy, does it count as having a long life if you don't remember any of it?

Dude, if you remember it, then you weren't really there!

I enjoy drinking Coke after a long day's work, not for the caffeine but rather the thirst quenching attributes. I don't drink more than that due to how much sugar/acid it has.

Does red wine have sugar/acid?

The thirst quenching attributes of Coke and wine both come from their major component, the well-known substance dihydrogen monoxide:

http://www.dhmo.org/

You can get it cheaper than both Coke and wine, and contrary to the alarmism in that page, it's quite safe if you take some basic precautions (and helps extend your life too.)

Most of the sugar in wines is fermented away, but some remains. Depends on the wine.

I'll point out though that there is no sugar in Coke, only high-fructose corn syrup.

High-fructose corn syrup contains large amounts of sugar.

Well, that's true, but it's not what people are generally referring to when they say "sugar". But technically I suppose that's correct.

I'm assuming red wine's residual sugar is in the form glucose, but could be wrong.

That's not true for all Coke. Mexican Coke still uses cane sugar; as does Coke in a lot of countries that have primarily kosher / halal consumers.

Damn, I need to try some Coke next time I'm in Mexico then.

If you have a Costco membership, they'll occasionally carry Mexican Coca-Cola in the 12 ounce glass bottles. That's the stuff with the cane sugar (and why it will usually be displayed away from the soda).

Aubrey de Grey's SENS strikes me as the most sensible approach to longevity. I suspect that he's a bit optimistic in his time estimates, however. (He is a computer scientist, after all.)

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