Not only red wine ups \'good\' cholesterol

Despite popular notions it\'s just red wine that positively impacts cholesterol levels, any alcohol will do, a U.S. metabolic disease expert says. \"Recent meta-studies have shown there\'s nothing magical about red wine,\" Henry Pownall, a chemist at Methodist Hospital in Houston who has been studying fatty acid and cholesterol metabolism for over four decades, said in a statement. \"You see the same effects from drinking small amounts of other kinds of alcohol.\" Pownall said it is alcohol itself -- ethanol -- that is responsible for increasing the level of high-density lipoprotein, or the \"good,\" cholesterol. Ethanol is broken down into acetic acid -- vinegar -- in cells, and it\'s acetic acid that cranks up processes that increase production of good HDL cholesterol. It is not clear whether acetic alone also lowers low-density lipoprotein, or the \"bad,\" cholesterol, Pownall said.