Sip a glass of wine to beat your depression blues

A news study has found that enjoying several glasses of wine each week may not only protect your heart, but it may also help protect your mental health.

Researchers in Spain have found that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol especially wine was linked with a lower risk of depression, Fox News reported.

Older men and women who consumed two to seven small glasses of wine weekly were 32 percent less likely to suffer from depression compared with people who never drank alcohol, the study revealed.

These results appear to contradict previous studies, which have often linked drinking alcohol with an increased risk of depression.

Two reasons researchers have suggested for this increased risk are that people might drink more to mask depressive symptoms and people might also turn to alcohol to cope with a personal problem, such as job loss, family issues or financial troubles all factors that mayalso trigger a depressive episode.

As for why these findings seem to conflict with other studies on alcohol, lead author Dr. Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, a cardiologist and professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, said it could be because the new study did not include people who previously had depression, or people known to have drinking problems.

"In our study population, the average intake of alcohol was low, and the pattern of consumption was typically Mediterranean, with alcohol coming preferentially from wine, consumed during meals and without episodes of binge drinking," he said.

The study looked at more than 5,500 men and women ages 55 to 80 in Spain, who were involved in a research trial evaluating the effects of the Mediterranean diet on heart disease risk. None of them had depression at the study's start.

During a follow-up period of up to seven years, 443 people reported that they were diagnosed with depression.

Researchers found that light to moderate drinkers, who drank 5 to 15 grams of alcohol daily on average, had a lower risk of depression compared with people who abstained from imbibing. (A small glass of wine contains about 9 grams of pure alcohol).

The lowest rates of depression were observed in people who consumed moderate amounts of wine.

The study found that men and women who drank two to seven small glasses of wine each week were 30 percent less likely to develop depression, compared with those who drank none.

The study is published online in the journal BMC Medicine.