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Trouble Sleeping? Try Red Wine.
Posted by perle0 on 2006-06-21 13:16:38
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[News]
[Italy] |
 You've defended your love of red wine by showing that it helps guard against cancer, prevents deafness, fights gum disease, makes you smarter, and even makes you more attractive to the opposite sex. With all that, who needs another reason to drink red wine?
Well, now you have one more, anyway. Researchers in Italy have found that a glass of red wine may also help you to fall asleep. |
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The magical ingredient in red wine that does this is melatonin, found in the grape skins that make wine red. (White wines are white because the skins are removed more quickly.) The grapes containing the highest levels of melatonin are Nebbiolo, the grapes used to make the Italian Barolo and Barbaresco wines--as if we needed a reason to drink Barolo. Other grapes that are high in melatonin are Cabernet sauvignon, Merlot, and Sangiovese--the main ingredient of Chianti and many other central Italian reds. The red grape with the least melatonin was Cabernet franc, a wine we're more likely to find in a blend than by itself. (Cabernet franc was the wine other than Merlot that was dissed by the main character in the movie Sideways--although the character's most prized bottle of wine, a '61 Cheval Blanc, is one of the few made exclusively from Cabernet franc grapes.)
Melatonin is produced naturally by the pineal gland during hours of darkness, and promotes sleep. Some people use it as a sleep aid, or to help combat jet lag. It's also a powerful antioxidant, and lack of melatonin has recently been singled out as a possible factor in increased risk of breast cancer. There's that cancer-fighting link again! So you can fight both insomnia and cancer with a delicious glass of Chianti...just what the doctor ordered. |
More specifics about the research linking wine and melatonin. |
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