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The Five Minutes it takes to read this can Literally Change Your Life! Please Read and check out the video with Barbra Walters about Resveratrol... You have only five minutes to loose, but so much to gain!
If you haven’t already heard about resveratrol (pronounced rez-VER-a-trawl), you will shortly. Resveratrol has been in the news a great deal. Research studies continue to find more interesting benefits from this compound, including potential anti-cancer and anti-aging activity. It is not surprising that research from all over the globe indicates that Resveratrol is shaping up to be the greatest nutritional discovery to date. Some scientist have even nick named Resveratrol the fountain of youth, and you will soon read some of the scientific data that gave birth to this nick name. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of misinformation about Resveratrol, so you need to keep the following in mind when reviewing articles and marketing information about related products.
Beginning November 1, 2006 nearly 500 newspapers reported on the resveratrol story and virtually every major TV news department followed. The news media heralded a study which showed that high-dose, known as red wine molecule, maintained the quality of life of laboratory mice (balance and coordination) as they aged despite a high-fat diet the high-fat fed mice lived 31% longer when given resveratrol.
Then the anti-dietary supplement news media began swaying consumers towards wine (a major source of resveratrol) because, as some authorities claimed, there is an uncertainty over the safety of resveratrol supplementation.
Forget that the EPA deems resveratrol to be non-toxic. Forget that animal studies show the equivalent of 21,000 milligrams in humans would be non toxic. Forget that three human clinical trials using 500 milligrams of resveratrol have passed the safety arm of their study. Forget that the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has conducted a toxicity review of resveratrol, and no major side effects are noted.
For the record, resveratrol is far safer than any alcoholic beverage and even safer than aspirin. When an alternative to an alcoholic beverage was available, a fact which should have been heralded, modern medicine and the news media, in a phobic aversion to dietary supplements, advised the public to get drunk on wine. Yep, you’d need to drink quite a few bottles of wine daily to get the same effect as the mice did in the recent study.
So 90 percent of the news reports said, until proven otherwise, wine was safer than pills. Then, in a convoluted way, reporters then said it would take too much wine to produce the same health benefits as shown in the recent study and consumers would have to drink far beyond the point of alcohol poisoning. Reporters drove this story into the ground until one wondered why they were even reporting it.
What dosage?
The human equivalent dose for 160-pound adult would be about 1575 milligrams of Resveratrol to produce the health benefits noted in the mouse study. The reporters didn’t read the study carefully, published in Nature Magazine, which said a lower-dose (364 milligrams for a 160-pound adult)
Produced similar benefits.
Furthermore, the mice were engorged with fat, 60% of their daily calorie intake. Americans once consumed about 45% of daily calories from fat (1965), but that number has dropped to about 34% (2002). So a lower amount of resveratrol, maybe half as much (-180 mg) would likely be effective.
To add to the confusion, Big Pharma paid a university researcher to tell a Canadian news reporter that resveratrol is not biologically available in oral doses, when the recent National Institutes on Aging/Harvard study had proven otherwise (the mice consumed oral doses and benefited greatly).
Can the public sort through the spin?
One wonders how a great discovery like penicillin would be dealt with by reporters and doctors today. Recall that penicillin never underwent a double-blind, placebo-controlled study to prove its safety and effectiveness. It was first used successfully to cure an eye infection in a young boy.
Why today the National Institutes of Health would claim penicillin was unproven and in need of decades of safety studies before it could be commonly prescribed. Drug companies would drive the price of penicillin to thousands of dollars per dose, declaring a shortage. HMOs would ration penicillin, fearing bankruptcy, and would say it could only be used as a last resort. News reporters would then call their family members and advise them to purchase drug company stocks while telling the public that penicillin is a “magic bullet.”
As future breakthroughs in healthcare are reported, doctors and the news media are going to spin the story endlessly to their own ends. It’s going to take an adept citizenry to recognize that the many recent resveratrol studies are on a par with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin or Louis Pasteur’s use of heat to destroy pathogenic bacteria (Pasteurization).
Significance of Resveratrol
Resveratrol will change the world for the better, but only if the public can see through the twisted interpretations by doctors and news reporters. Resveratrol is a potent anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-estrogen, anti-cholesterol, weight-controlling, blood pressure and blood sugar-normalizing agent. The drug companies know what resveratrol portends – the end of their charade that different drugs are needed for each disease and that synthetic molecules work better than nature.
Resveratrol Activates a Longevity Gene (Anti-Aging)
In a widely publicized report, researchers at Harvard Medical School and BIOMOL Laboratories have demonstrated that resveratrol activates a “longevity gene” by activating a cell’s survival defense enzyme, which prolongs the time cells have to repair their broken DNA.
One of the known causes of aging and death is that older cells lose their ability to perfectly replicate DNA in every new cell. DNA “mistakes” accumulate and allow little pieces of DNA to become active and print themselves out, so to speak, creating a type of “DNA debris” that eventually stops a cell from functioning. It is similar to printing out a report and having a couple of pages at the end not contain any relevant information-so you throw them away. The cell can’t throw away the extra “printed out” DNA; it accumulates and clogs up the cell. This build up of “debris” is connected to aging, and the death of individual cells. Resveratrol reduces the frequency of “DNA debris” by 60% through the longevity gene that is stimulated. [25-27, 11, 16]*
Resveratrol’s ability to activate the gene has to do with its chemical structure, not its antioxidant potential. It works by increasing the rate of a reaction known as “deacetylation.” Acetylation reactions affect whether a gene is “off” or “on.” This is extremely important. In cancer cells, for example, genes are activated that aren’t supposed to be and vice versa. By controlling deacetylation and augmenting the longevity gene, resveratrol is able to confer some serious life extension benefits-at least in lower critters. And, yes, acetylation modulators are being pursued for the treatment of cancer to restore the normal activation/deactivation of genes in cancer cells. [25-27, 11, 16]*
Resveratrol and Cancer
Cancer is perhaps, the most dynamic area of resveratrol research. Resveratrol is the first natural medicinal to have solid evidence behind it showing that it blocks or stops many stages of cancer. Resveratrol not only prevents cancer, it’s being proposed as an additional treatment. [11-13]*
The number of studies has exploded in the past three years, with the depth of knowledge about this polyphenol increasing with each report. Resveratrol is a broad-spectrum agent that stops cancer in many diverse ways, from blocking estrogen and androgens to modulating genes. [14-17]*
Some of the latest information about it shows that resveratrol causes a unique type of cell death,[11] and kills cancer cells whether they do or do not have the tumor suppressor gene,[18] it also works whether cancer cells are estrogen receptor-positive or negative.[15,19]*
Researchers in Austria have done elaborate studies showing that resveratrol blocks the ability of cancer cells to metastasize to bone (30-71%). [20] The highest results were for pancreas, breast, and renal cancer. Prostate and colon cancers were also inhibited, but not as much.*
Resveratrol also acts against a component of Western diet that promotes cancer cell growth: linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is converted to arachidonic, which is converted to hormone-like substances (such as prostaglandin E2 and leukotriene B4) that can promote inflammatory processes that stimulate cancer cell growth, among other things. It has been demonstrated that the western diet can cause colon cancer in rodents without any other chemical or factor being necessary.[21] In a study from Japan, resveratrol in an amount easily obtained by supplementation, inhibited the growth of breast cancer cells, and blocked the growth-promoting effects of linoleic acid from the Western diet.[22]*
Resveratrol works against a wide range of cancers, both at the preventive and treatment stages. Its ability to stop cancer is connected to its capability, first, to distinguish a cancer cell from a normal cell. Unlike chemotherapeutic drugs that affect normal as well as cancer cells, resveratrol does not damage healthy cells. Not only is it not harmful to normal cells, it protects them. [23, 24] Second, resveratrol is sophisticated in its actions. It doesn’t just scavenge free radicals; it activates and deactivates critical enzymes and genes, hormones and chemicals. [25-27, 11, 16]*
Cancers Inhibited by Resveratrol According to published research*
Colon
Neuroblastoma
Esophageal
Breast (all types)
Prostate (all types)
Leukemia (various types)
Metastasis to bone
Skin
Pancreas
Ovarian
Melanoma
Liver
Lung
Stomach
Oral
Cervical
Lymphoma (various types)
Thyroid
*In rodents and/cell culture
Resveratrol and Heart/Blood Vessels
One of the serious complications of free radical damage is hardening and thickening of the arteries. A “vicious cycle” of radicals, artery damage, and narrowing due to scar tissue that, in turn, promotes more free radical activity and more damage, has been described.[1] Resveratrol, melatonin and probucol are suggested as treatments for this progressive process. Resveratrol’s antioxidant action helps stop free radical damage and opens the arteries by enhancing nitric oxide.* Nitric oxide is a critical component of heart/artery function. It allows blood vessels to “relax,” which enhances blood flow. In a recent study, a high-cholesterol diet decreased nitric oxide by about a third. Resveratrol supplements significantly reversed the trend. [2] In this respect, resveratrol is similar to Viagra, which also affects nitric oxide. However, whereas Viagra only affects small vessels, resveratrol affects the main arteries.
Finally, resveratrol also stops the proliferation of cells in the blood vessels that narrow the arteries,[3] and it also keeps blood cells from sticking together.[4] Both are very important for preventing heart attacks. The ability of resveratrol to keep blood cells from sticking together was investigated by Canadian researchers who wanted to know what role, if any; other components of wine might play in the process. They found that ethanol itself inhibited one type of stickiness-promoter (thrombin), and quercetin (another polyphenol) inhibited a different one (12-HETE), but nothing else they tested was active against this aspect of heart disease except resveratrol, which inhibited not only thrombin, but a host of other stickiness-promoting factors. [5]*
Resveratrol and Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s patients produce an abnormal peptide (a piece of protein) known as “beta-amyloid” in their brains. Beta-amyloid provokes oxidative stress, and eventually cells are killed because of the abnormally high levels of free radicals. The killing of brain cells causes the gradual decline in Alzheimer’s patients. It has been proven that resveratrol can protect the brain against oxidative stress, and keep cells alive.[6,7] Research shows that adding vitamins C and/or E to resveratrol provides a greater degree of brain protection than any of the antioxidants alone.[8]*
Resveratrol and Spinal Cord Injury/Stroke
A recent study by Chinese researchers is notable. [9] If confirmed by other researchers, it could be very important for people who undergo serious brain/spinal trauma or stroke. In these types of injuries, the body’s response causes further injury, and for that reason, people are treated with drugs like cortisone, and in the case of stroke-aspirin. The idea is to reduce the body’s inflammatory response to the injury.
The study from China showed that resveratrol reversed the signs of inflammatory response to spinal cord injury on a level comparable to prednisone (a steroid used to reduce inflammation), but with better energy compensation and protected against free radicals, when injected immediately after injury. Besides helping to ameliorate this type of injury through free radical blockage, resveratrol actually inhibits specific enzymes that change the way individual cells respond to the injury. It’s possible that if a person regularly takes supplemental resveratrol, they will be more likely to withstand a stroke or other injury to the brain. This has been demonstrated in rodents pretreated 21 days with resveratrol.[10] Less motor damage, and less brain damage occurred post-stroke.*
Resveratrol and Diabetes
In November 2007, a study was released in the publication Cell that indicated that resveratrol administered orally to mice protected them from gaining weight and developing diabetes. A lead researcher of the study, Johan Auwerx, said a study of men and women from Finland revealed that resveratrol will likely produce similar results in humans.
Resveratrol and Antiviral Effects
A Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Study found that multiple viral protein products were reduced or completely blocked, as well as a reduction in viral DNA production. [29]
A cell culture study found that resveratrol blocked the influenza virus from transporting viral proteins to the viral assembly site, hence restricting its ability to replicate. The effect was 90% when resveratrol was added six hours after infection and continued for 24 hours thereafter. [30]
Resveratrol and Athletic performance
Dr. Auwerx (November 16, 2006) New York Times [28] States that resveratrol converts the structure of muscle to that of a trained athlete without the training.
Dr. Auwerx attributes this in large part to the significantly increased number of mitochondria he detected in the muscle cells of treated mice.
Mitochondria are the organelles in the body’s cells that generate energy. With extra mitochondria, the mice that were fed resveratrol were able to burn more fat and thus avoid weight gain and decreased sensitivity to insulin.
An ordinary laboratory mouse will run one kilometer on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component
Of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. They also have energy-charged muscles and a reduced heart rate, just as trained athletes do, according to an article published online in CELL by Johan Auwerx and colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France.
Interested, use ID #838
Referenced Research
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24. Floreani, M. et al. Oral administration of trans-resveratrol to guinea pigs increases cardiac DT-diaphorase and catalase activities, and protects isolated atria from menadione toxicity. Life Sci. 2003;72:2741-50.
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29. Faith SA, Sweet TJ, Bailey E, Booth T, Docherty JJ. Resveratrol suppresses nuclear factor-kappaB in herpes simplex virus infected cells. Antiviral research 2006 Jul 14 PMID 16876885
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NOTE:
For over 2527 published clinical reports go to www.pubmed.gov, this is the national library of medicine. Put Resveratrol in the search. The reports are in scientific jargon, but all positive and very impressive.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease.