Red Wine, Hard Climbing, & Martinis

For your Friday Psyche I present some excellent research on the health benefits of wine as well as a video where it’s put into practice. Picky types might notice that increased stomach flora is unlikely to help athletic performance in a given afternoon but that’s nitpicking. Wine is good for you and this guy used it to help him have perhaps the best afternoon of climbing in history.

First, the wine part. From the NY Times:

When it comes to the health-promoting effects of red wine, its potential to protect against heart disease tends to get all the attention. But there are some who see it as a sort of probiotic delivery system, capable of benefiting the stomach as well...

In one, the subjects drank red wine, about a cup daily. In another, they drank the same amount of red wine daily, but this time with the alcohol removed. In the third, they drank up to 100 milliliters a day of gin each day. In the end, the researchers found that both types of red wine produced improvements in the bacterial composition of the gut, lowered blood pressure and reduced levels of a protein associated with inflammation.

The video is of German climber Permin Bertle doing something that’s never been done, climbing two 9a’s within a 75 minute window (only a few climbers have managed two 9a’s in a given day). According to the vid this happened after a volumous lunch featuring many glasses of wine. Also worth noting that this is the second non-conventional Psyche vid in a row, as this one goes into some depth on what’s required to do each climb. These vids, that perhaps lack the pace of pure climbing porn, provide a lot more information about what the sport entails. I like 'em.

Finally, while it wasn’t the focus of the study it was good to see that the odd martini has more than the obivous upside as well. The Times reports, slight improvements in gut flora were seen among gin drinkers, but the effects in the wine drinkers were much more pronounced.

Have a great weekend! See you at the crags, or the bar.