Resveratrol to stop aging?*

Anti-aging enthusiasts have been in a lather in recent years about the chemical resveratrol, present in red wine. For one thing, low levels of heart disease among French people (despite all the cheese and butter they eat) could be due to the red wine they also enjoy in liberal quantities, scientists say -- maybe because of the resveratrol. Resveratrol may also mimic the life extension seen when animals are fed diets low in calories.

But the question has been: Would you have to swallow unrealistically huge quantities via pills or wine to get the effect? Maybe not, a new study suggests.

Scientists recently showed that if you fed resveratrol to obese mice eating a high-fat diet, they'd stay as healthy and spry -- and live just as long -- as mice that were fed a low-fat diet and stayed lean. They also showed that mice fed resveratrol became super-duper athletes, running twice as far on little treadmills as their non-resveratrol-fed brethren. The hitch: In such studies, animals were fed a truckload of resveratrol, the equivalent of a person drinking 100 bottles of wine a day. (Doctors, and one's liver, would frown on this.)

The new study, conducted by scientists in academia and industry and published this week in the journal Public Library of Science One -- an odd-sounding name, but there you go -- found that middle-aged mice fed far lower levels of resveratrol than in that older study also received significant benefits, or at least what seemed to be benefits. Normally, as hearts get older, certain genes in their tissues switch off, and other genes switch on. In the study, resveratrol-fed mice exhibited a lot less of these aging-related gene changes, implying that the aging process was being slowed. The gene-change retardation was similar to that seen with animals kept on a calorie-restricted diet.

This isn't the same as proving that resveratrol stops heart attacks or makes a mouse live longer, far less a human being. But it's encouraging. "This brings down the dose of resveratrol toward the consumption reality mode," says the paper's senior author, Richard Weindruch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in a news release.

Study lead author Jamie Barger of the company LifeGen Technologies explained in an email that the resveratrol dose the mice got was 4.9 milligrams/kilogram of body weight -- which would make the equivalent human dose 350 milligrams for an average-sized person -- or 35 bottles of wine a day (!). But  Barger says you could get the number down to maybe four to five daily glasses based on a couple other factors -- one of which is the fact that red wine contains other potentially beneficial resveratrol-like chemicals. "I think we would all agree that this much consumption might be excessive," Barger wrote. "Right now it's important to note that (a) we have shown for the first time that a low dose of resveratrol has clear effects on cardiovascular aging, and (b) further studies may show that an effective dose might even be lower than what we tested in the current study."

Also of interest: Drug companies are working on chemicals that may mimic resveratrol -- but more powerfully. You can read more about resveratrol here.

--Rosie Mestel

* P.S. Resveratrol can be taken as a supplement, of course -- also as a strange beverage I just realized I had sitting on my desk.  It's called Reversitall Plus, and a company called NeoCell sent it to me some months back. It looks just like a bottle of wine, and according to the blurb on it, it contains 2,000 micrograms of resveratrol per serving. This, by the calculations above, doesn't sound like enough -- but by now my head is spinning with these numbers and, what the heck. Three of us poured it into plastic cups and knocked it back.

Yow. Blah! Sorry. This reminded me of a tonic my grandma made me take. Wine for me, thanks.

Photo: Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Ross]

Resveratrol is available in wine, supplements, food etc. I take supplements, eat grapes, and drink red wine. Read up on resveratrol, the most important health finding certainly in the past 100 years and maybe ever? resveratrol.com

[Rey Ximenes]

The reason the french live longer is probably multifactorial and if we think we will mimic this with a single ingredient, forget it. By the way, one of the reasons they do better is the butter and the cheese which is healthy for you. See www.westonaprice.org for the real truth.

[Jason]

I like the fact that this shows promise, but let us not forget, and please agree with Rey Ximenes, The reason the french live longer is probably multifactorial and if we think we will mimic this with a single ingredient, forget it. That the French have VERY good health care system, plus a very liberal vacation ( at least 5 weeks a year maditory for every job) there are many things we could benefit from learning from their “walk of life”.

[Leon Ferder MD]

Our research group in the University of Buenos Aires has made this known in studies during the last 15 years. We found that using drugs to block the renin angiotensin system in normal mice or rats, such as converting enzyme inhibitors, lifespan had been extended in 40%, since these drugs slow down theaging process. This mechanism would be an antioxidant effect at the mitochondrial level, through blockage of the angiotensin hormone. The first of this series of studies was published in 1983 in the American Journal of Physiology. This mechanism is very similar to that of revesratrol, which is also an antioxidant. Although our studies and publications were pioneers in this branch of study, regretfully they have not been recognized as such by many.

[FredHanson]

The mouse data is encouraging, but the numbers don't add up for the Reversitall-plus supplement. The original study (available at the link in the article) gives the dose as 5 milligrams per kilogram of weight each day. That is roughly equivalent to 350 milligrams daily for an adult man and 280 miligrams for the average woman. The supplement supplies 2 milligrams per one ounce, so do the math. It may be that less resveratrol is needed, but even a whole bottle supplies only 50 milligrams. I'll wait for more data, and continue drinking red wine in the meantime.

[TomBoyer]

Re the comments about quantity/dose, Resveratrol can be bought inexpensively in capsule form. You have to read the fine print, but you can get 50mg (not microgram) capsules in bottles of 60 capsules for $10-15 a bottle over the web. Two of those a day might be safer than drinking excessive quantities of red wine. Take the capsules and then drink the 1-2 daily glasses of red wine that are good for you. It seems prudent to stick with moderately low doses until more is known about this chemical.

[Future is bright]

I have been taking Bioforte from Biotivia.com for over 1 year now
and have felt a great increase in my stamina and endurance levels
and my normal aging aches and pains have almost gone.
I fortnately had no major problems with my health before taking Bioforte,
but nevertheless realised that maybe because I was in my fifties that I should
cut back in some of my hobbies which include cycling and running my own business (Stress!!)
I now have a fantastic outlook on my future which I put down to Resveratrol.
Maybe I can have a fantastic finish to my life and not have to retire to an old age pensioners
home after all!
All you guys out there should look into this as lots and lots of retired Doctors are taking this as we speak.
If it works for them then why not you?
I now look forward to a bright future with aging not being on my agenda.
It`s worth a look at as the prices are really low and available to people on a tight income
just like myself.
Lots of my friends are waking up to this new idea and are now beginning to try resveratrol
for lots of ailments they have.
I look forward to see how they how many of them see improvements in themselves.
One of my closest friends has Diabetes, and as the results coming through on the web are very optimistic
I will be keen to know if this helps him as he will be able to tell from his blood diagnosis really
quickly if the resveratrol is working for him.
The products from Biotivia seem to be the best on the market that I have found, but please do a little research
for yourself before you buy.
This could change your life for the better.

[Jonathan L]

I read an article like this about a year ago and I have been taking resveratrol for about a year. The article on the mice say that you need large doses of resveratrol to mimic the same effects but like FredHanson, i'll wait till more information comes out. So far I am just taking a glass of redwine a day and the pills on a supplemental basis and things have been good.

[Robert]

A little research would be nice.

Resveratrol is available in an extracted powdered form. It's absolutely unnecessary (and ridiculous) to swallow wine by the barrel. Resveratrol is present in wine in such minute quantities, it's illogical to consider wine to be the ideal source for the desired quantity.

In fact, in nature, the plant source with the highest resveratrol content isn't the grape -- it's Japanese knotweed. It is from this plant that resveratrol is harvested, isolated and processed for consumption.

It's also disingenuous for the journalist who penned this article to resort to such hyperbole: "animals were fed a truckload of resveratrol, the equivalent of a person drinking 100 bottles of wine a day."

The animals were not fed wine. They were fed powdered resveratrol from Japanese knotweed. And the equivalent of 100 bottles of wine isn't much resveratrol at all.

[Nancie]

There is plenty of research if you look in the right place. This resveratrol is the future of nutritional supplementation and anti-aging. The very best resveratrol is made by a company right here in the US called Shaklee...check out their research, product and testimonials...of which I am one.

Dr. Sinclair, a co-author of more than 60 published articles on aging research, heads a research team of more than twenty post Doctorate students at Harvard Medical School and has this to say about the anti-aging effects of resveratrol: "Over 70 years ago," Dr Sinclair said, "scientists discovered that a calorie restricted diet increases animal lifespan 30%....

We have found in our scientific studies that "Reseveratrol, a compound found in red wine, tricks cells to switch on the aging pathways, which in turn mimics the effect of calorie restriction."

"Resveratrol lowers the incidents of cancer, diabetes, alzheimers disease, and osteoporosis in animals."

Dr. Sinclair also said, study results show that resveratrol...

Lowers blood sugar levels, [especially] for type 2 Diabetics.
Improves memory and artery vessel walls
Lowers cholesterol (MIT study in 2007)
Slows down the aging of cells and molecules
Reduces the incidence of breast cancer and other forms of cancer.
Resveratrol is "the most potent natural molecule against cancer."(animal studies)
Reduces inflammation, and joint pain
Increases mito chondria in muscles (animal studies)
How exciting is that?

[Kevin]

Unlike other journals, over at PLOS One, peer review only judges the soundness of the methods, not the importance of the work or even the soundness of the conclusions. It's kind of a burial ground for work that you don't think will get published elsewhere. If the authors found that this lower dose of resveratrol did more than change gene profiles, and you can bet they checked (if not, they are lousy scientists), they would have published in "Science" or "Nature," not buried this work in PLOS One. Also, though they don't mention lower doses, I suspect that they must have tested them but found that the still high dose of 4.9 mg/kg/day was the lowest dose at which they saw any effect at all.

As for taking large quantities of this stuff... Remember when another anti-oxidant, beta-carotene, was the darling of the supplement world? Then it turned out that high quantities of supplemental beta-carotene might actually be harmful in some people. I think I'll wait awhile, maybe a very long while, before I start ingesting very large quantities on a chemical tested mainly by people with a financial or professional stake in the outcome. Its natural source is not a comfort. Cyanide occurs naturally, too. Even if resveratrol is benign or even beneficial in small quantities, chemicals often act on completely different processes when present at high concentrations. Ask any pharmacologist. High concentration often swamps out the specificity of drugs.

The fact that very large quantities of resveratrol are required to produce an effect under experimental conditions suggests that the very small amount of resveratrol found in wine does not account for the low incidence of heart disease among the French.

[Harry]

I think people definitely got a little bit over-excited when the first research was announced, but then things scaled back a bit when the study started to come under more scrutiny.

As for the "megadoses" of resveratrol that many people think you need, that's not necessarily true. In fact, I just read a study the other day that was on Reuters that talked about the fact that you can get lots of benefits from resveratrol by taking a much lower amount than was initially thought.

Yes, to get some of the "fountain of youth" type of effects that you saw in the study, you'd have to go hog wild with it. But you can still get lots of positives by taking reasonable amounts that are found in most supplements.

[Jordan Thomas]

Important to Note: Most research on resveratrol has been conducted on animals, not people. Research in mice given resveratrol has indicated that the antioxidant might also help protect them from obesity and diabetes, both of which are strong risk factors for heart disease. However, those findings were reported only in mice, not in people. In addition, to get the same dose of resveratrol used in the mice studies, a person would have to consume 100 to 1,000 bottles of red wine a day.

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