Advice on lifestyle changes (diet, red wine and physical activity) does not affect internal carotid and middle cerebral artery blood flow velocity in patients with carotid arteriosclerosis in a randomized controlled trial.

Background: A Mediterranean diet, with and without small daily amounts of red wine, and physical activity reduce the risk of cerebrovascular disease and improve cognition. An increase in cerebral blood flow may be the underlying mechanism. Under normal conditions, cerebral blood flow velocity changes in the internal carotid arteries and in large basal cerebral arteries correlate closely with cerebral blood flow changes, as the diameter of these vessels hardly changes and only the smaller vessels downstream change their diameter.

A daily glass of red wine and lifestyle changes do not affect arterial blood pressure and heart rate in patients with carotid arteriosclerosis after 4 and 20 weeks.

Background: Regular consumption of small amounts of red wine improves blood lipids. However, there is concern whether this beneficial effect might be counterbalanced by an increase in blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR), which are risk factors for cerebro-cardiovascular disease. In particular, we studied whether regular consumption of red wine with and without lifestyle changes (LC; healthy diet and physical activity advice) results in an increase in BP and HR.

A daily glass of red wine associated with lifestyle changes independently improves blood lipids in patients with carotid arteriosclerosis: results from a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Physical exercise and a Mediterranean diet improve serum lipid profile. The present work studied whether red wine has an effect on top of a lipid-lowering lifestyle in patients with carotid atherosclerosis.

Methods: A prospective randomised unblinded trial was performed from 2009 to 2011 in 108 patients with carotid atherosclerosis, 65% of whom were already on statin therapy with a low mean LDL of 104.