Life Extending Chemical Is Found In Certain Red Wine 37
Squiffy writes "Yahoo is running a story from the New York Times about an interesting new find in the study of aging. It is thought that Resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, might explain why "the French live as long as anyone else despite eating fatty foods deemed threatening to the heart." Resveratrol's exact effect in humans is not yet certain, but it has been shown to extend lifespan in yeast and fruit flies, and humans "have counterpart genes that are assumed to work in a similar way." Some of the scientists involved in the study have even started with their "red wine a day". This raises the question, if a red wine a day keeps the doctor away, and you are a doctor, what happens when you start your daily regimen? Does it just keep other doctors away? Do you explode? Anyway, maybe it's time to stock up on the Pinot Noir."
Is it the wine or the grape? (Score:5, Informative)
I suppose its what you get when you have an industry based on selling products made from processed ingredients, they present the product as being beneficial not the ingredient.
Perhaps nothing very wrong in this, but slashdotters should at least be interested in where the real benefit lies and who benefits from the lies.
Sam
Re:Is it the wine or the grape? (Score:4, Informative)
From page 2 of the NY Times article at [nytimes.com]
Dr. Sinclair said. Resveratrol, he said, is unstable on exposure to the air and "goes off within a day of popping the cork."
Resveratrol is synthesized by plants in response to stress like lack of nutrients and fungal infection. It exists in the skin of both red and white grapes but is found in amounts 10 times as high in red wine as in white because of the different manufacturing process.
Epidemiological studies point to red wine as containing some beneficial antidote, but it is not yet certain whether alcohol, resveratrol or a combination of the two is the active ingredient.
Re:Is it the wine or the grape? (Score:2)
Re:Is it the wine or the grape? (Score:3, Funny)
We all benefit from an excuse to drink lots of red wine on grounds that it's good for your health, so lets just keep those "lies" rolling in shall we. Thank you.
In this case Resveratrol is in the grape (Score:5, Informative)
The parent page [uiuc.edu] has links to a fair few interesting snippets of information on food, most of which y'all cola-guzzling caffeine-addicted drunkards don't want to know. (-:
Take the Google shortcut [google.com.au] and read about:
Germane in recent days are such gems as "preparing food suring a power failure [uiuc.edu]" (linked from this health articles index [uiuc.edu]).
Er, yes, actually, too often I am. (-: (Score:3, Interesting)
Vermouth too? (Score:2)
Link to NY Times article.. (Score:5, Informative)
Life-Extending Chemical Is Found in Certain Red Wines [nytimes.com] &
Study Spurs Hope of Finding Way to Increase Human Life [nytimes.com] &
Toronto Star [thestar.com] version
Coincidentally, in July the FDA announced [yahoo.com] that peanuts significantly lower risk of heart disease. From the article:
Pinot's gonna cost ya... (Score:2, Informative)
Anyway, maybe it's time to stock up on the Pinot Noir."
Take some advice from an AC who's been in this hobby for a while: Pinot's gonna cost ya. [wine-searcher.com]
Be a lot cheaper to drink 2 Buck Chuck [traderjoes.com].
the link (Score:5, Informative)
the newscientist link (Score:1)
on newscientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns
Re:the newscientist link (Score:2, Informative)
Published in Nature.. (Score:3, Informative)
I think 20 hour work weeks, the predisposition to surrendering, and lots of romance and Jerry Lewis are more likely the culprits.
That and a good dose of... (Score:2)
Re:Published in Nature.. (Score:1)
Re:Published in Nature.. (Score:2, Funny)
French Longevity (Score:2, Funny)
Except, of course, when they're fighting Germans.
UK Hospital (Score:5, Informative)
At least one UK hospital is is giving heart attack patients wine [bbc.co.uk]. I try and have two glasses a day with my evening meal. It's a tough life having a healthy diet - wine, smoked salmon (any oily fish really), fresh fruit and home made bread. I don't know how I cope.
And two red wines... (Score:3, Funny)
Stock up? Bah! (Score:3, Funny)
Screw that... lets start drinking (it's after 9am where I am, that's not too early is it?)
Keeping doctors away (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you end up as the one who shaves the barber [geocities.com] .
Um, old news? (Score:3, Interesting)
A number of other studies have indicated that any form of alcohol (in moderation) can serve to reduce the risk of heart disease. Red wine may have additional benefits, but white wine and even beer have shown to be beneficial if consumed in moderation in a number of studies. (Of course, any wine will be better than beer due to the fact that wines typically have more alcohol and less carbohydrates - Beer shoots my bloodsugar up significantly, usually needing a unit of insulin per glass, while wine usually has near-neutral effects on my bloodsugar levels.)
Ahh, my first step of the twelve steps... (Score:3, Funny)
First step: drink red wine.
Second step: eat stinky cheeses.
Third step: Run! Run Away!
Fourth step...
(apologies to French readers. It was just too tempting a joke.)
Re:Ahh, my first step of the twelve steps... (Score:1)
Cinq: Nous profitons!!
Je ne pourrais pas resister
And they call themselves editors... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And they call themselves editors... (Score:2)
* As parent noted, the story has links to yahoo.com and nytimes.com... but no links to anything about the topic of the posting. You could submit a story about goatse guy with those links. Or were the editors testing whether anyone RTFA?
* The story is long. Most good
Sorry for being a retard (Score:2)
By the way, I must confess that I *still* think the exploding doctor joke is funny. You can call me an idiot now if you want. =*)
Not news (Score:3, Informative)
I did a little research into resveratrol last year. Here's some of what I found.
The "French Paradox" was the result of a study by Serge Renaud, a French physician, published in The Lancet in 1992. He found that although French and British citizens consume approximately the same amount of calories, the British had a much larger rate of fatal heart disease. This, despite the fact that the French smoked more, exercised less, and ate more saturated fats. The largest difference in this diet study was that the French consumed red wine.
So they decided that something in the wine gave the French an advantage. This, by the way, was televised by 60 Minutes on Nov. 17, 1991 (and an update on Nov. 5, 1995). (Yes, the TV special was on before the Renaud's article was published; studies have been going on for a while.)
Resveratrol is synthesized in plants as an anti-fungal agent, so it's found in the skin, seeds and leaves of grapes (not the fruit or juice).
To make wine, you squish the grapes, add yeasts, and let it ferment. The biggest difference between making red or white wine is that for red wine, you let the skins stay in the first fermentation. For whites, you filter out the skins after squishing them. Therefore, the red wine has more time to pull all the resveratrol out of the skins while it's fermenting.
Resveratrol itself is in a class of compounds called polyphenols. A lot of polyphenols have been found in wines, and resveratrol is not the only one that is now considered beneficial (it was the first to be characterized, so it gets the glory). At any rate, most scientists think that resveratrol acts as a radical scavenger or antioxidant in the body, which is where its benefits come from. Because of this scavenging property, resveratrol can help reduce the amount of HDL ("good" cholesterol) that turns into LDL ("bad" cholesterol). That, in turn, reduces the amount of coronary heart disease.
Don't get too many ideas about drinking a bottle a day though. A 10-year study by Gronbaek (British Medical Journal, 1995) showed that people who drank 1-2 glasses of wine a day increased longevity and decreased mortality from coronary heart disease over people who didn't drink at all. However, those who drank 4-5 glasses of wine per day still had a low mortality from CHD, but had a very high cirrhosis death rate.