IT’S THE THAT’S KILLING US

IT’S THE " OLD " CHOLESTEROL THAT’S KILLING US - And Wine Can Inhibit LDL Aging, or Oxidation by M. L. Hilton

Elevated levels of "bad " cholesterol have been implicated in the high rate of death Americans face each year from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), otherwise known as hardening of the arteries. But it now looks like it is not necessarily the amount of cholesterol that is found in the blood stream that is bad for you, but how long that low density lipoprotein (LDL) has been there.

This finding is the key to understanding the role of wine in diet because phenolics found in wine and some other foods can inhibit the aging, or oxidation, of LDLs.

In a presentation given to the American Society for Enology and Viticulture’s Wine & Health Symposium, Rosemary Walzem of the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of California, Davis, said it might be "old" LDL that is causing most of the problems.

"It takes longer for people with high LDL-cholesterol to remove LDL-cholesterol from the blood, and as a result, the LDL in people with high blood LDL-cholesterol is on average, older," Walzen said in a report that was released at the symposium. Walzen co-authored the report with Robert J. Hansen, also of the UC_Davis. "We found that older lipoproteins were far more susceptible to oxidation than were younger lipoproteins."

According to Walzen and Hansen, it is the older lipoprotein that may be responsible for the building of plaque in arteries which is the basis for ASCVD. They further state that it is " possible that protection of LDL from oxidation could prevent or slow development of this disease."

These findings correlate with those of the " French Paradox. "

Recent studies have shown that the French have diets of saturated fatty acids that are comparable to those of the Americans, they also have similar risk factors and comparable levels of plasma cholesterol. However, their death rates from ASCVD are almost half that of the United States.

" French people with high plasma cholesterol levels were not immune to ASCVD, but they seemed to tolerate a much higher level than people in the United States," Walzen and Hansen said.

One key dietary element that was significantly different was that of alcohol consumption, specifically red wine, which is consumed in greater quantities in France than America.

"Scientists at UC Davis were the first to identify the capacity of wine phenolics to act as potent dietary antioxidants," according to Walzen and Hansens report. It is the ability of wine, and certain other foods and beverages to inhibit the oxidation, or aging, of the cholesterol that provides its beneficial result.

The probability of oxidation depends upon the concentrations of oxidant initiators and the susceptibility of LDL to oxidation, Walzen said. "And wine contains more than 100 potentially effective antioxidants."

" Wine will likely emerge as an unusual delivery vehicle for plant phenolics, whose conspicuous abundance in certain populations has proven to be a key observation in the search for mechanisms for health improvement," Walzen said in her report. "It is a very large area that deserves a lot of study."