Red Wine and Radiation — Radiation, Day 27

March 3rd — Red wine has been shown to decrease a radiation patient’s burn side effects. Now that’s a clinical trial I want to participate in! I’ve been trying to drink a half-glass of red wine each evening, although I’m not much of a drinker so have forgotten on several occasions. I think the radiation fatigue is starting to hit though. I feel very tired, as if I mistakenly took a Tylenol PM in the morning instead of my multi-vitamin. If I start drinking now at 4:30 in the afternoon, I’ll be asleep by 5 p.m. I wonder about the research done for the red wine study. Did the control group drink grape juice, one group of women drank the recommended one glass a day, another study group drank two glasses each day, and another drank half a bottle? I think that last group might have suffered more radiation burn, but they were so drunk each day on all that red wine consumption, they didn’t really care!