Red wine keeps on giving
December 5th, 2008 by Barb
In last month’s post about college kids who developed a beer with some of the health benefits of wine, I touched on resveratrol—the chemical in wine that’s been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals. And now I keep stumbling across articles about additional potential benefits of resveratrol (and, in turn, red wine)—including slowing the aging process and fighting obesity.
First, I happened upon an article from last June touting the anti-aging potential of resveratrol. The article refers to a study out of the University of Wisconsin that tested the effects of the chemical on mice. It found that resveratrol can reduce the degenerative diseases of aging.
The Wisconsin results are notable because they tested doses of resveratol “that can be readily achieved through dietary supplementation in humans”—in earlier studies, the article reports, “the animals were fed such large amounts of resveratrol that to gain equivalent dosages people would have to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day.” My head throbs just thinking about that.
The study concluded that the tested doses produced the same pattern of gene activity associated with caloric restriction, which has been shown to impede several aspects of the aging process in mammals. As the article notes, though, that level of caloric restriction “is far too hard for most people to keep to and in any case has not been proven to work in humans.” Resveratrol could be a viable option for reproducing the anti-aging effects.
An article published last week explores research into just how resveratrol improves the health and lifespan of lab mice. According to the article, scientists “believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.”
This finding comes from a just-published study by a group led by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School. “Sinclair has been taking large daily doses of resveratrol since he and others discovered five years ago that it activated sirtuin.” Nonetheless, the scientist cautions that sirtuin’s role in aging has not been proved: “We are careful not to say this is the cause of aging, but based on everything we know it’s not a bad hypothesis.”
Finally, there’s this article about resveratrol’s potential in fighting obesity. In German experiments with so-called “pre-fat cells,” resveratrol apparently prevented the cells from converting into mature fat cells. Resveratrol also hindered fat storage in the cells and reduced production of substances that may be linked to the development of obesity-related disorders like diabetes and clogged coronary arteries.
The article concludes that:
“[i]ncreasingly, studies support the idea that drinking a small amount of alcohol each day — no more than one to two servings — is better for you than not drinking, but the findings don’t apply to everyone. Even small amounts can increase risk for certain health worries, like breast and colon cancer [FF40 note: not to mention alcoholism]. Although those risks are generally offset by the extra heart benefits, some people may decide it is not worth it.”
Personally, I’d be willing to take the risk—if only I liked red wine. How ’bout some research that justifies drinking whites, scientists?
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