Resveratrol: Cutting-Edge Technology Available Today
By Terri Mitchell
Source: Life Extension Magazine (www.lef.org)
Wine. No other beverage has attracted the attention of modern medicine like this drink. Although it is most widely known for its benefits for the heart, wine has benefits against cancer, dementia, and other age-related diseases. Researchers in Denmark recently looked at 25,000 people to find out what drinking alcohol does to mortality and discovered that wine drinkers slash their overall risk of dying from any cause by about 40%.[1]
Chemists took wine apart years ago to find out what makes it tick. Basically, it contains a host of plant compounds. Unfortunately, resveratrol and some of the other beneficial components got shelved as "toxicants," and nobody paid much attention to them until a scientist tried to figure out why the French can eat so much fat and not get heart disease. It turns out that part of the answer to the "French paradox" is resveratrol found in red wine.
Resveratrol is naturally created by certain vines, pine trees, peanuts, grapes, and other plants. One of these plants (Polygonnum cuspidatum) is an ingredient in traditional Asian medicines that are prescribed for liver and heart conditions. Resveratrol is classified as a polyphenol because of its chemical structure. Polyphenols make up a huge group of plant compounds that are further broken down into other classifications such as flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, and the like.
In the early '90s, after wine was pinpointed as the probable answer to the "French paradox," researchers realized that the resveratrol content of wine might be the secret ingredient behind the healthy heart effects attributed to it and the traditional Asian heart medicines containing Polygonnum. Research began in earnest, and just over a decade later, the accolades are enormous: "marked antioxidant activity," "shows great promise for preventing cardiovascular disease," "remarkable inhibitor," "chemotherapeutic, little or no toxic effects in healthy cells," "high efficacy against multiple sites." Dozens of studies were published in this past year alone. Research has uncovered a diverse range of activities that may make resveratrol one of the most useful agents ever discovered for a wide range of human health problems.*