Photo by Steve Lupton/Corbis via Getty Images
Corbis via Getty Images
For many wine lovers, red wines cause headaches. Some are mild. Others are horrible. If the National Library of Medicine has its facts straight, even the ancient Roman physician Aurelius Cornelius Celus (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD) complained about red wines and headaches.
This February, a three-member team of researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center has announced that hope is on the horizon for red wine headache sufferers. The team is crowdfunding a study that aims to identify what components of red wine are most to blame for headaches. If the study succeeds, new farming and enology techniques might one day result in reds that don’t pack the wrong kind of punch. In any event, once the researchers have pinpointed the headache-causing chemicals in red wines and also identified some reds that aren’t rich in those chemicals, consumers may be equipped to make less pain-inducing buying choices.
The researchers hope to raise $25,000 to fund the first year of study.
The Research Team
The three team members are:
· Andrew Waterhouse, a wine chemist and Professor of Enology at UC Davis. Dr. Waterhouse is also the Director of the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science.
· Oliver Fiehn, the Director of the Metabolomics Lab at UC Davis. (Metabolomics are metabolites, which is to say products of metabolism.)
· Morris Levin, chief of the Division of Headache Medicine and director of the Headache Center at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, top right. Dr. Oliver Fiehn, top left. Dr. Morris Levin, bottom.
Photo of Andrew Waterhouse by Eleni Kardaras. Other photographers unknown.
A skilled clinical interviewer working with the study team will gather data from people for whom red wines cause headaches. From that information, the investigators will create lists of wines that are a problem and wines that aren’t. They can then perform sensitive analyses of the chemical makeup of both kinds of wines.
Why The Researchers Are Crowdfunding
Even though the study will investigate the probable causes of some headaches, as health-related research it is far less critical than, for example, COVID or cancer studies. For this reason, the three investigators aren’t even bothering to apply to traditional funding sources like the National Institutes of Health.
Defending the decision not to apply, Dr. Waterhouse explained in a phone interview, “Wine lovers and members of the wine industry have a strong interest in seeing the mystery of red wines and headaches solved.” As part of his crowdfunding effort, he has reached out to alumni of the UC Davis program in Viticulture and Enology, asking them to send news of the project to wine enthusiasts everywhere, including people who run wine clubs.
“Our alumni work in the wine industry throughout California and the rest of the world,” Dr. Waterhouse explained. “By reaching out to them I am in essence reaching out to the industry for support.”
The crowdfunding website will raise money through 11:59 pm PST on February 28.
A fun note: Red wine is rich in polyphenols, which are antioxidants with demonstrated health benefits. Unfortunately, not all reports linking the polyphenol resveratrol to longevity live up to their hype. For a brilliant comic look at the longevity line of research, see the New Yorker’s “Mouse au Vin.” It is the story of a resveratrol researcher who goes on a bender with his lab animal.
