Red Wine, Healthy Heart: It’s All in the Genes
The French paradox has had scientists puzzled for quite some time now. The puzzle is how a general population can consume a diet notorious for its high saturated fat content and remain free of the heart diseases that plague people from other parts of the world, including the United States.
It seems the answer to the puzzle is a little red wine with each meal. Red wine has been long suspected as being the key to solving the puzzle but the exact mechanism of the wine has been elusive until now.
A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have determined that the red wine, or resveratrol in it, works as a triggering mechanism to more than 1,000 genes affecting the heart. These genes change function as a person ages but the resveratrol influences the genes to work the same way they do in a younger heart.
Resveratrol occurs naturally in grapes, pomegranates, and some other foods. When grape skins ferment during the process of making red wine, the resveratrol content is increased, making red wine a very abundant source of this compound.
Using the well-documented knowledge that a lifestyle of reduced caloric intake can extend the lifespans of animals from humans to insects, the Wisconsin research team compared the effects of resveratrol in low doses to a diet of caloric restriction. A diet of caloric restriction usually contains 20% to 30% fewer calories than a standard diet and has been shown to alter the way 92% of the genes in the heart respond to the aging process.
The research team reports that resveratrol, even in low doses, seems to mimic the heart-healthy effect of the restricted diet by effectively preventing age-related decline of the heart’s function. What’s even more remarkable is that resveratrol consumption can improve heart function even when using it begins in middle age.
The research team chose the June 3 issue of Public Library of Science One, an open-access journal online, to publish the results of their study. The team suggests further study is in order to determine if there are any master biochemical pathways that can be activated by resveratrol, a restricted diet, or other mechanisms that can extend life as well as improve the health of the heart along the way.
The National Institutes of Health and DSM Nutritional Products, Basel, Switzerland, provided grants to fund this study.
Source: University of Wisconsin - Madison
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The Life Extension Foundation has known about resveratrol for years. Nice to see that medical doctors are finally pretending to discover it.
http://www.lef.org is where you want to look for all the material that self important academic losers will be pretending to discover 10 or 20 years from now. All the therapies they discuss will work fine before government funded parasites pretend to discover them, and will continue to work fine after these plagiarists are trying to take credit for things legitimate experts have known all along.
I concur with Andy’s comments above.
I have been an LEF member for over 20 years. I can tell you that they have an excellent track record on this.
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