A glass of wine a day tackles depression, Spanish study finds

Salud! A wine a day can help ward off depression, study finds

In a completely made-up scale measuring feel-good news headlines from one to ten (one being ‘Nuclear attack kills millions’), the discovery by Spanish scientists that a glass of wine a day will keep the blues away must surely rank at around 9.5.

But unlike the nuclear attack headline, this one isn’t fictitious. Spanish researchers spent seven years analysing the positive effects of the so-called ‘Mediterranean Diet’ – largely based on olive oil, fresh fruit and vegetable, fish, wine and a small quantity of dairy and meat products – and discovered that of the 5,500 people they followed in the survey, those that drank between two and seven glasses of wine a week were less likely to suffer from depression than non-drinkers…

However, before you all rush out to rid Mercadona’s aisles of its plonk, there is a caveat. There always is. Depression prevention is not a reason to take up drinking, warned lead researcher Miguel Angel Martinez-Gonzalez.

”If you are not a drinker, please don’t start drinking,” said the professor from the University of Navarra. “If you drink alcohol, please keep it in the range of one or less drinks a day, and consider drinking wine instead of other alcoholic beverages.”

The researcher’s findings were published this week in the BMC Medicine journal, and even took into account other extenuating circumstances, such as diet, marital status and whether a subject smoked or not. Every time, for both men and women, the results were the same – moderate wine drinkers were less prone to depression.

“The results show an inverse association between low to moderate alcohol consumption and new cases of depression,” Martinez-Gonzalez said. None of the 5,500 participants had suffered any previous instances of depression or problems with alcohol before the study. The group of Spaniards were all aged between 55 and 80 (a period in one’s life when the risk of developing depression is relatively high), and wine was the most popular drink.

“Depression and heart disease seem to share some common mechanisms because they share many similar protective factors and risk factors,” continued the professor, whose research was conducted to extol the values of a Mediterranean diet. Previous studies have shown that such a diet can cut the risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 30 per cent, and although obesity in Spain is now above the OECD average, Spaniards still lead the longest healthiest lives in Europe.

One could argue that living in Spain is reason enough to combat depression. Add a brilliant diet of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and wine to the already-alluring cocktail of sun, sea and sand, then you’ve a recipe for a long and happy life. Surrounded by empty wine bottles. A corking idea.