Health & Wellbeing

Researchers close in on revealing what causes red wine headaches

A study has homed in on a flavanol in red wine called quercetin as potentially being the main culprit being the dreaded red wine headache
A study has homed in on a flavanol in red wine called quercetin as potentially being the main culprit being the dreaded red wine headache

For as long as humans have been imbibing alcohol they have also been battling with the drug’s notorious side effects. Headaches and nausea often follow a few beverages due to the build up of a toxic by-product of alcohol – acetaldehyde.

When ethanol is metabolized by our liver the chemical acetaldehyde is left over. Acetaldehyde is incredibly toxic to a human body and when we can’t effectively clear it out, levels can build up leading to a variety of common unpleasant symptoms, including headache and facial flushing.

But one alcoholic beverage has a much more notorious history of inducing headaches. For centuries red wine has been thought to trigger headaches more than other drinks, and it has been unclear exactly why this could be the case. What is it specifically about red wine that seems to cause more headaches in people than other alcoholic drinks?

A variety of different hypotheses have been floated over the years. Some people believe the added sulphites in red wine generate an allergic response leading to headaches, while others have pointed to the high histamine content of red wine as a possible culprit. More recently some researchers have turned their focus to a group of compounds in red wine called flavanols.

A new study, from a team of scientists at University of California, Davis, zoomed in on about a dozen specific flavanols in red wine. The researchers wanted to know if any of these chemical compounds affected acetaldehyde metabolism.

The in vitro research swiftly highlighted one particular chemical – quercetin. On its own, quercetin is considered to be quite a beneficial flavanol. Found in many fruits and vegetables it is known for its anti-inflammatory effects. But the study found that when combined with alcohol, quercetin blocked the action of an enzyme our bodies use to break down acetaldehyde.

“When it gets in your bloodstream, your body converts it to a different form called quercetin glucuronide,” explained Andrew Waterhouse, corresponding author on the new study. “In that form, it blocks the metabolism of alcohol.”

Essentially the hypothesis is the more quercetin present in wine, the slower our bodies can metabolize acetaldehyde and this can lead to the toxic side effects of alcohol we all know and hate. Of course, this isn’t necessarily the entire story behind red wine headaches. After all, not everyone experiences these negative effects so acutely. Study co-author Morris Levin suggests those who suffer red wine headaches are likely to harbor other pre-existing conditions that make them more susceptible to the effects of quercetin.

“We postulate that when susceptible people consume wine with even modest amounts of quercetin, they develop headaches, particularly if they have a preexisting migraine or another primary headache condition,” said Levin. “We think we are finally on the right track toward explaining this millennia-old mystery.”

The researchers are now set to investigate their hypothesis in a small human clinical trial. They will look at the effects of different wines with varying quercetin concentrations on headaches in a human cohort.

The new study was published in Scientific Reports.

Source: UC Davis

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4 comments
Rocky Stefano
What about about the fact that many ppl take quercetin as a supplement today?
Karmudjun
Great - a Quercetin-O marketing strategy could follow the Bean-O marketing! Take one Q-O every hour you drink and no headache! New, from the Red Wine Lobby & associated manufacturing. That is a business I'd like to invest in - my wife gets red wine headaches.
Jinpa
To avoid wine headaches, drink only wines from a single vineyard, no matter whether the wine is red, rose or white, or which country it came from. Avoid all blended wines. Look for wines which say they are grown and bottled at the estate where they were grown. The French phrase is Mis en Bouteille au Chateau. People who buy wines from many vineyards are negociants, so theirs are the wines to avoid if you have the headaches experience, no matter how prestigious their brand name sounds.
RFM
@ Jinpa: I've been involved in both wine production (on 2 continents), wine sales, & wine education for about 2 decades. Sorry, there's no correlation in my experience between propensity for headaches in wines made from a single vineyard/Domaine bottled vs. negociant/multi-vineyard blends. To prove my point, your reference to "Mis en bouteille au chateau", used widely in Bordeaux & Rhone, for example, where virtually all appellations of which are blended wines. Bordeaux, depending on the appellation, allows for merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, petit verdot, malbec, and sometimes carmenere. In the Rhone, Chateauneuf-du-Pape allows for a blend of 13 grape varieties; Ventoux permits grenache, syrah and mourvèdre, cinsault, marselan and carignan. The overwhelming majority of Champagnes (real Champagne from France) are blends. In Burgundy, negociant Joseph Drouhin made technological advances in fermenter design and makes highly respected wines. In California, there's a significant separation between viticulture and vinification; most wineries have contracts for parcels of grapes from several sites managed by others to make wines [read: blends in most cases]. It remains that vinification is basically the same wherever you go.

What is true is that the overwhelming majority of US "Estate Bottled" wines and Domaine / Chateau bottled wines from France start north of $150.00--appellations like Ventoux perhaps an exception.

(And in Burgundy where I lived for almost two years, it is "Mis en bouteille au Domaine".)