Getting forgetful? Drink champagne!

Steve Williams, writing on a site called Care2Causes, says new research shows that two or three glasses of champagne a week may help to fend off the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. No, this was not an experiment conducted by bibulous scientists among themselves – the test was carried out on rats.

Half of these rats ate a champagne-laced diet for six weeks before the test, and the other half did not. Then each rat ran through a maze in search of food – twice, to see what it remembered of finding food the first time. A-maze-ingly (sorry), the rats on the fizz diet remembered a lot better than the teetotal group. The boffins therefore concluded that a modicum of bubbly boosts spatial memory.

Later, they said a trifle ominously, biopsy tests were carried out on the rats to measure the proteins known to be important to short-term memory. They found a staggering (perhaps literally) 200% increase in these ‘memory proteins’ among the bubbly-drinking rats. Apparently the black grapes used in making champagne have these magic substances in their phenolic acid. Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier are particularly rich in them.

The researchers now plan to conduct trials with up to 60 pensioners, who will be asked to drink champagne in ‘controlled doses’ for the next three years. It should not be difficult to recruit volunteers, though an unconvinced spokesman for the Alzheimer’s Society said a lot more research was needed.

We at the Voice feel that, whether the magic phenols work or not, you may as well die happy