Resveratrol

Resveratrol
Exciting research continues to emerge concerning the
powerful polyphenol resveratrol, which is found in
peanuts, berries, the skin of red grapes, red wine, and in the
Japanese Knotweed plant also known as Polygonum.
Resveratrol is produced by certain plants to act as a natural
pesticide. In the case of grapes, it concentrates in the skin
and protects the plant from mold and bacterial infection.
The harsher the climate grapes grow in for example, the
more resveratrol is found in wine produced from those
grapes.

Resveratrol research has proven it to provide very potent
antioxidant protection, estrogen protection, cardio-protection,
cancer protection, viral protection and neuron protection.
But probably the most exiting news on resveratrol is
that researchers at Harvard Medical School are hopeful that
resveratrol may actually be capable of increasing human
lifespan dramatically! They discovered that resveratrol acts
as a sirtuin activator, meaning it activates the SirT1 gene,
which when turned on slows the aging process. It is
believed that the trans-resveratrol form is responsible for
this anti-aging effect.

Resveratrol has the same anti-aging effect as
cutting calories
A recent study by the Harvard Medical School and the
National Institute of Aging shows that a high dose of
resveratrol lowers the rate of diabetes, liver problems and
other fat-related ill effects in obese mice by mimicking the
well know life extending effect produced by calorie restriction.
On mice fed a high-fat diet fat-related deaths dropped
31 percent for obese mice on the supplement, compared to
untreated obese mice.
Treated mice also lived much longer than expected. The
treated obese mice were just as agile on exercise equipment
as lean mice. Also, “the organs of the fat mice that got the
resveratrol looked normal when they shouldn't have”, said
study lead author Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical
School. Resveratrol is also being researched by this group
for the treatment of diabetes.

What is effective dosing?
One negative aspect of otherwise positive resveratrol
research is that it would be impossible to consume from
normal food sources the amount of resveratrol proven
effective. The amounts used in one successful mouse study
were approximately 22.4 mg/kg body weight per day.
Scaling this amount to human body weights could imply
an “equivalent human dose” of 1.5 to 2.0 grams/day,
however if one compensates for the fact that humans have
slower metabolic rates than mice, an equivalent human
dose may be closer to a range of 200 mg/day.