Study: People with Type 2 diabetes could benefit from a glass of red wine a day

A new study is shattering what researcher Iris Shai of Israel's Ben Gurion University calls the myth that "alcohol is not so safe" for people with diabetes.

Shai and her team followed 225 people with elevated blood sugar for two years, and had them eat a Mediterranean-style diet. Some drank one glass of red wine per day and others drank one glass of white wine, while the rest drank mineral water. At the end of the study, Shai said, the researchers "found that a glass of red wine with dinner can improve the cardiovascular health of people with Type 2 diabetes."

They also discovered that compared with people who drank mineral water with dinner, those who drank wine experienced improvements in blood sugar control. The red wine drinkers had the benefit of also seeing their levels of good cholesterol rise. Drinking more than one or two servings a day can diminish those gains, and people who are slow metabolizers had the most improvement in their blood sugar control. One glass a day has "admittedly modest but worthwhile benefits," Christopher Wilcox of Georgetown University Medical Center told NPR, but "most certainly a glass of red wine does not substitute for good control of blood glucose with one of the diabetic medicines."

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