How Drinking Wine Can Lead to Optimum Health
By Edward W Johnson
Researchers report that a natural substance found in red wine, known as resveratrol, may offset the bad effects of a high-calorie diet.
Their report implies that very large daily doses of resveratrol could offset the unhealthy, high-calorie diet thought to underlie the rising toll of obesity in the United States and elsewhere.
Resveratrol is found in the skin of grapes and in red wine and is conjectured to be a partial explanation for the French paradox, the puzzling fact that people in France enjoy a high-fat diet yet suffer less heart disease than Americans.
Scientists have long known that a moderate intake of alcohol, and red wine in particular, is associated with a lowered risk of heart disease and other benefits. More recently, scientists began to suspect resveratrol had particularly powerful effects and began investigating its role in lifespan.
Information about resveratrol's effects on human metabolism should be available a year or so. Therefore, having another glass of pinot noir is has far as it should be taken right now.
Researchers also said that people should wait for the results of safety testing. Substances that are safe and beneficial in small doses, like vitamins, sometimes prove to be harmful when taken in high doses.
Many companies sell the substance, along with claims that their rivals' preparations are inactive. One such company sells an extract of red wine and knotweed that contains an unspecified amount of resveratrol. But each capsule is equivalent to '5 to 15 5-ounce glasses of the best red wine,' the company's web site asserts.
Other companies have developed several chemicals intended to mimic the role of resveratrol but at much lower doses. One has begun clinical trials of one of these compounds, an improved version of resveratrol, with the aim of seeing if it helps control glucose levels in people with diabetes.
Behind the resveratrol test is a considerable degree of scientific theory, some of it well established and some yet to be proved.
Your health really does matter!
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