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Solving the red wine headache mystery
‘Tis the season for holiday get-togethers, complete with the enticing aroma of good food and the allure of red wine. Yet, the potential for a red wine headache might cast a shadow on the festivities for some.
But some good news: scientists may have helped uncork the mystery behind the phenomenon of the red wine headache.
In a preliminary peer-reviewed study, published Monday in Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of California looked into why the “red wine headache” happens to people who normally don’t suffer from them when drinking other types of alcohol.
“Red wine headache does not require excessive amounts of wine as a trigger. In most cases, the headache is induced in 30 minutes to three hours after drinking only one or two glasses of wine,” the authors of the study stated.
While sulphites, histamine, and tannins have been considered possible triggers for wine headaches, there still has been no definite answer.
To unravel the mystery, researchers conducted tests on over a dozen compounds in red wine, honing in on a singular potential culprit.
Read more about what the researchers found and what it means for red wine drinkers.
What’s behind China’s reported spike in pneumonia in kids?
The World Health Organization (WHO) this week cited unspecified media reports and a global infectious disease monitoring service as reporting clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China. This prompted the WHO to request more details from China about the reported outbreak.
On Thursday, the WHO said it held a teleconference with Chinese health officials, and said the data it requested was provided. The WHO said the data showed an increase in hospital admissions of children due to diseases including bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and common cold viruses since October.
But Chinese officials said they did not detect any “unusual or novel diseases” in the country.
The Public Health Agency of Canada told Global News on Thursday in a statement that it was aware of the reports and public comments by Chinese officials, citing the same information as the WHO.
The UN agency noted that some of the increases in cases “are earlier in the season than historically experienced, but not unexpected given the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in Canada and other countries last year.”
Read more about what PHAC and the WHO said about the reported outbreak in China.
— THE TOPIC —
Fertility benefits in Canada
— WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING —
More than half of Canadian employers do not offer fertility benefits, and those that do cover less than two per cent of both drugs and treatment costs such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, sperm, eggs, and testing, according to a recent survey.
The survey by Mapol Inc. found that the average lifetime coverage limit for fertility drugs in Canada is now $6,000, which is a “drop in the bucket,” given how expensive these treatments can be, said Carolynn Dubé, executive director with Fertility Matters Canada.
In 2022, Canada had its sharpest drop in births registered since 2005 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, StatCan said in a report published in September. And the number of babies born in Canada dropped to a 17-year-low last year, Statistics Canada said.
In lieu of this, a growing number of companies in Canada are introducing or expanding fertility benefits for their employees.
“We have seen over the past two years more and more companies coming to the table with inclusive fertility and family planning benefits,” Dubé told Global News.
But the progress has been slow and limited mostly to drug coverage, which is a “small piece of the pie,” Dubé said.
She said companies should consider increasing coverage for fertility treatments, surrogacy, adoption, fertility preservation and donations of eggs, sperm or embryos.
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