blake
You’ve undoubtedly heard of resveratrol. Resveratrol is a substance that is believed to boost lifespan and has been shown in studies to do so, and it’s this property that well-to-do urbanites frequently utilize as an excuse to purchase and drink their expensive wines.
The excuse just doesn’t work the way the rich urbanites intend it to. Sure, resveratrol can activate genes called sirtuins that have been linked to delaying aging and improving health in mice. However, the impact is most likely highly dependent on dosage.
If your average red wine has 1.0 mg. of resveratrol per 5-ounce glass, you’d have to down 500 glasses each day to have a good chance at reaping the life-extending benefits claimed by resveratrol.
Of course, drinking all that booze (and sugar) would swiftly kill you in and of itself.
Real Therapeutic Supplementation
That isn’t to say that tiny doses of resveratrol and some other polyphenols aren’t beneficial. They are. It’s simply that people mix up broad, long-term health benefits with particular therapeutic outcomes.
Let me give you an example. Consuming an 80 milligram baby aspirin is thought to provide numerous health advantages, including the ability to lessen the chance of developing colon cancer. However, if you wish to use aspirin for a specific condition like migraines, you’ll need to take at least eight times that amount.
It’s also true of resveratrol. Taking small doses, such as those found in a glass of wine, is good for you in the long run. However, if you want to utilize resveratrol to achieve a certain result, such as boosting longevity, preventing aromatase inhibition, lowering total body fat levels, or maybe enhancing motor function, you’ll need to consume more than what’s found in a handful of grapes or a glass of wine . You’d need to take a resveratrol pill or down 500 glasses of wine.
However, whether resveratrol can truly extend life in humans is difficult to establish, especially when you consider that you have to live for a long enough time with the drug in your body to see any beneficial effects. You can do it in roundworms and other shorter-lived species because they do not live long and they do not have legal teams ready to sue you if you do something unethical.
Other advantages are more difficult to validate, however a new meta-analysis of resveratrol’s effects that just went online provides considerable evidence.
What the New Study Found
The researchers looked for resveratrol-related studies in several databases. After eliminating duplicates and non-relevant papers, they had 25 articles with 1,171 participants – 578 were in the placebo group and 593 were in the treatment group.
The researchers discovered that resveratrol (from 100 mg. to 1,000 mg.) given in intervals ranging from one to six months produced the following effects:
- Waist circumference decreased considerably.
- A significant reduction in hemoglobin A1c was observed. (The A1c is a blood test that calculates the average amount of sugar in your blood over three months.)
- Cholesterol levels dropped considerably.
Resveratrol, on the other hand, had no effect on adiponectin or leptin levels, two cytokines that work in tandem to regulate fat metabolism and weight control. That implies something else was responsible for the beneficial effects.
