Wine may protect skin from radiotherapy side effects
Added 02.09.2009
Radiotherapy and your skin
Radiotherapy can take an enormous toll on the body and mind; pain, fatigue, weakness and not to mention emotional factors, such as depression, anxiety, fear and anger, make coping with cancer treatment hard. Radiotherapy is aggressive; it is designed to kill cancer cells, but in the process your tissue is destroyed and healthy cells are inevitably killed as well. Many cancer patients also experience skin reactions due to radiotherapy. Most commonly, the skin in the treatment area turns red or darker in colour and becomes very sore and may even peel, similar to sunburns. However, new research suggests that wine may be able to significantly reduce these side effects.Wine may protect skin from radiotherapy side effects
A recent study published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, has found that drinking a glass of wine a day significantly reduced the incidence of radiotherapy skin side effects.The Scientific Study
Background information
This study aimed at assessing the "potential radioprotective effects of wine in preventing skin toxicity in patients with breast cancer." For this purpose, 348 women with breast cancer were divided into three groups based on radiotherapy dose/fractionation scheme:
- Control group (60.4 Gy.).
- Modulated Accelerated Radiotherapy in Adjuvant treatment of breast cancer (MARA)-1 protocol (44 Gy.).
- MARA-2 protocol (60 Gy).
Results
Acute skin toxicity of Grade 2 or higher was highest in those patients not receiving wine (p=0.021). "The daily amount of alcohol intake also influenced the incidence of skin toxicity, with an incidence of 38.4% in patients with no wine intake, 31.8% in patients drinking half a glass per day and 13.6% in patients drinking one glass per day. Therefore, drinking a glass of wine per day seems to have a radioprotective effect on radiotherapy skin toxicity.
How does wine protect against radiotherapy skin toxicity
The exact mechanism is not know but scientists believe that it is due to wine's many natural antioxidants. Wine has over 300 of these antioxidants called proanthocyanidins. Resveratrol, the most researched proanthocyanidin, can be found in large concentrations in the skin and seeds of grapes and has already been found in many scientific studies to have beneficial effects on the heart and circulatory system, inflammation, longevity, allergy and asthma. Among other things, resveratrol helps to neutralise free radicals that cause oxidative stress and cellular damage.Wine or supplements?
For various reasons, many people don't want to or can't drink a glass of wine a day. If this is your case, the perfect alterntive is to take natural grape seed extract supplements.Doctor's Natural Grapavin + extra resveratrol is a safe and natural way to make sure you are getting the beneficial properties of wine. 100 mg of our grape seed extract supplement is equivalent to approximately 4,000 grape seeds and in one Grapavin capsule there is at least twice the amount of resveratrol than in one whole bottle of wine! Whether you are undergoing radiation therapy or not, grape seed extract is an all rounded health booster.
References:
Dr. Bo Nielsen's comments:
Chemotherapy or radiotherapy side effects are often a problem cancer patients face. Side effects can be so pronounced that cancer patients may decide not to go through with treatment. Previous studies have shown that grape seed extract (from wine) reduces chemotherapy side effects. Many people taking grape seed extract supplements experience significantly less side effects during chemotherapy compared to those not taking supplements. This study confirms that the 300 different ingredients in wine reduce the severity of radiation therapy side effects. One glass of wine was used in this study and the type of wine was not evaluated. I personally believe that higher amounts of these beneficial wine ingredients, achieved by taking grape seed extract supplements, may further improve the effect.
Unfortunately, for cancer patients, many oncologists still believe you should not take any supplements while being treated for cancer as they may lower the effect of the therapy. This is NOT true according to several scientific studies; on the contrary, taking certain natural nutritional supplements may even protect the healthy cells from being destroyed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which strengthens your own natural cancer defense systems.
