Study Claims Red Wine Vinegar Can Lower Cholesterol, Cut Cancer Risk!

Vinegar is a solution that is often used as a taste enhancer in different types of dishes like chowmein, fried rice and many others. While it may seem like a normal addition to your food, a particular type of vinegar may have great health benefits for you like the red wine vinegar. While all vinegars offer some health advantages, red wine vinegar's unique properties come from its origin, red wine. This shared heritage means red wine vinegar inherits some of red wine's beneficial compounds, most notably resveratrol according to WebMD. Although the fermentation process reduces the amount of resveratrol the vinegar has, some still remains in the final product. A 2018 review in Biomedicines shows that resveratrol has the potential to be an antioxidant protection against heart problems as well as the development of cancerous tumors. This makes red wine vinegar a potentially functional food that gives you benefits that are beyond basic nutrition. It’s important to note that the concentration of resveratrol in red wine vinegar is likely less than in red wine itself.

Now, here's where things get interesting, all vinegars contain acetic acid which is a natural result of the fermentation process, and this acid seems to be a big part of why red wine vinegar might help with cholesterol. But it is not just red wine vinegar, studies that were looking at how acetic acid affects cholesterol, are actually relevant to all kinds of vinegar. For example, a 2023 study in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare looked at apple cider vinegar and found that people with diabetes who drank it daily for eight weeks saw their bad cholesterol go down. Scientists think this is because acetic acid can affect how our bodies make fat, based on earlier studies in animals. There was even a study back in 2010 in Lipids in Health and Disease where rabbits on a high-cholesterol diet were given vinegar, and they had less cholesterol buildup than rabbits who didn't get any. This is a promising result as it could mean many possible heart-health benefits, but it's important to remember that these were animal studies, so to understand it better, there needs to be human involvement.

Beyond cholesterol, there's also many other interesting studies done on red wine vinegar and its potential for cancer prevention, especially for melanoma which is a type of skin cancer. Studies show that resveratrol, which plays a huge role in the health benefits of red wine vinegar, might be a key player here too. A 2018 study in OncoTargets and Therapy looked at melanoma cells in a lab and found that resveratrol could actually stop them from multiplying. This suggests that it might have the potential for preventing or even treating melanoma. Another study from 2018 done by the International Journal of Molecular Medicine had similar results, which basically showed that resveratrol could suppress the growth of melanoma cells in lab dishes. Now, one thing you must remember is that these were lab studies and were not done on people, so we do need more research to know for sure how this works in real life. But these initial findings are definitely promising and should be explored more, as these diseases have plagued a lot of people throughout the world and any potential cure can become the real deal.