Scientists uncork a potential secret of red wine's health benefits

Biology News Net July 30, 2009

Scientists from Scotland and Singapore have unraveled a mystery
that has perplexed scientists since red wine was first discovered
to have health benefits: how does resveratrol control inflammation?
New research published in the August 2009 print issue of The FASEB
Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), not only explains resveratrol's
one-two punch on inflammation, but also show how it—or a
derivative—can be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory
disease, such as appendicitis, peritonitis, and systemic sepsis.

"Strong acute inflammatory diseases such as sepsis are very difficult to treat and many die every day due to lack of treatment," said Alirio Melendez, senior lecturer on the faculty of medicine at Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre in Scotland and one of the researchers involved in the work. "Moreover, many survivors of sepsis develop a very low quality of life due to the damage that inflammation causes to several internal organs. The ultimate goal of our study was to identify a potential novel therapy to help in the treatment of strong acute inflammatory diseases."

In this study, researchers administered an inflammatory agent to two groups of mice. One group was pretreated with resveratrol and the other group was not. The mice that were not pretreated with resveratrol experienced a strong inflammatory response, simulating disease in humans, while the group pretreated with resveratrol was protected from the inflammation. The scientists then examined the tissues of the mice to determine exactly how resveratrol was able to protect the mice from inflammation. They found that resveratrol used a one-two punch to stop inflammation in the mice by preventing the body from creating two different molecules known to trigger inflammation, sphingosine kinase and phospholipase D. This finding suggests that resveratrol may be harnessable as a treatment for inflammatory diseases and may also lead to entirely new resveratrol-based drugs that are even more effective.

"The therapeutic potential of red wine has been bottled up for thousands of years," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, "and now that scientists have uncorked its secrets, they find that studies of how resveratrol works can lead to new treatments for life-threatening inflammation."

Check out Resveratrol here

Resveratrol: How it prevents Aging

Resveratrol is a powerful antioxidant found in grapes, pine trees, peanuts and other plants. For years scientists have been fascinated by the "French Paradox", which is the high fat diet that the French have and the low incidence of heart disease. There has been much research on this and it has been concluded that the answer lies in the wine that the French also drink and the high levels of resveratrol found in the grapes that go into producing it.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging have found that resveratrol in high doses let mice eat a high fat diet and somehow avoid the problems associated most commonly with obesity. The liver and other systems of these mice remained healthy and related deaths dropped by 31%.

Another study showed that mice that were feed high levels of resveratrol along with high fat diets exhibited less weight gain, greater physical endurance and better insulin sensitivity.

Resveratrol also showed the ability to increase the life span in yeast, mice and certain fish.

There are other benefits to resveratrol that are related to the fact that is a powerful antioxidant. It has been quoted as "one of the best free radical scavengers". Free radicals in the body are produced by naturally occurring environmental stress and damage healthy cells in the body.

Resveratrol shows promise in a number of human age related health studies focusing on diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A recent 60 Minutes interview highlighted some of the research going on today. There are several clinical trials already underway on this subject. The research being done now is focusing on resveratrol as being a substance which can increase longevity by eliminating some of the diseases associated with growing older such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and heart associated diseases. To do this, they believe it can slow done the aging process. Scientists have long known that one way to live longer and healthier is to always be hungry. Reduced caloric intake seems to trigger a gene known known for its "survival instinct". This someday may allow a 80 year old man to have the health of a 50 year old today. The ability to prevent or delay the onset of life threatening diseases would have a enormous effect on the quality of human life as you can well imagine.

The American Heart Association doesn't recommend that you start drinking alcohol just to prevent heart disease or any other illness. Alcohol can be addictive. Too much increases your risk of high blood pressure, high triglycerides, liver damage, obesity, certain types of cancer, accidents and other problems. In addition, even small amounts of alcohol can cause cardiomyopathy — weakened heart muscle — and heart failure in some people. If you have heart failure or a weak heart you should avoid alcohol completely. The safest and most effective way of taking resveratrol would be as a dietary supplement. This gives you the advantages of benefitting from this very important substance as well as avoiding the problems associated with alcohol.