This article explores the potential causes of red wine headaches, focusing on compounds such as sulfites, biogenic amines, tannins, and quercetin. It examines the role of alcohol metabolism and suggests that quercetin, a phenolic found in red wine, may inhibit the enzyme ALDH, leading to increased acetaldehyde levels and headaches.
Sulfites have been a popular scapegoat for all sorts of ailments since it became mandatory in the 1990s to label them on wines in the U.S. However, not much evidence links sulfites directly to headaches, and most people have compounds called sulfite oxidases that create sulfate from sulfite – the 20 milligrams in a glass of wine are unlikely to overwhelm your sulfite oxidases. Some people point the finger for red wine headaches at biogenic amines.
These are nitrogenous substances found in many fermented or spoiled foods, and can cause headaches, but the, since white wines contain only tiny amounts, while red wines contain substantial amounts. Tannin is a type of phenolic compound – it’s found in all plants and usually plays a role in preventing disease, resisting predation or encouraging seed dispersal by animals.besides tannin that make it into red wines from the winemaking process, and are not present in white, so any of them could be a candidate culprit. Tannin is also found in many other common products, such as tea and chocolate, which generally don’t cause headaches. AndThe metabolism of alcohol happens in two steps. First, ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde. Then, the enzyme ALDH converts the acetaldehyde to acetate, a common and innocuous substance. This second step is slower for people who get flushed skin, since their ALDH is not very efficient. So, if something unique in red wine could inhibit ALDH, slowing down that second metabolic step, would that lead to higher levels of acetaldehyde and a headache? To try to answer this question, we scanned the list of phenolics abundant in red wine. We spied a paper showing that quercetin is a good inhibitor of ALD
Health Wine Headaches Quercetin Alcohol Metabolism
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