Resveratrol

Whenever a new health supplement or anti-aging wonder drug is introduced to the public many people think that it might be a scam.  This belief is often justified, because many of the health, weight loss, and anti-aging supplements on the market have little government oversight and do not live up to their lofty promises.  This is why it is always important that you do your homework before buying into one of these new trends for wellness.

So, is resveratrol a scam?  You’ve probably heard that resveratrol is considered an incredibly powerful way to fight off the disease of aging.  It supposedly can help fight off heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  Many arthritis sufferers claim that their pain lessened or disappeared completely after taking this supplement.  There have even been reports showing that resveratrol can help you lose weight by regulating the metabolism of fat.  Getting all of these benefits from a simple pill you take each day would be great, but are they too good to be true?

Of all the superfoods and ” miracle” cures that had been discovered over the last 20 years, the scientific community seems to think that resveratrol offers the biggest chance to help the slowdown the aging process.  Many of these new wonder cure supplements usually only have one or two scientific studies backing up the claims made by those trying to sell it many cases the studies are not even conducted up on humans.  Once they have their one study showing the potential for positive benefit when the product is released to the general public.

However, this is not the case when it comes to resveratrol.  There have literally been hundreds of scientific studies conducted on this potentially age defying substance.  Even the pharmaceutical giant GSK has decided that the benefits have so much potential that they are currently spending billions of dollars to test and develop their own proprietary synthetic version of this supplement.

So, while we still have much to learn about how this substance works or the exact effects of long-term use, there is little disagreement amongst scientists that this red wine supplement has some very promising effects in the fight against growing old.

This does not mean that every resveratrol supplement that you find in stores or online is legitimate or of high quality.  There are many people out there who take all of the positive press and scientific research and try to use it to make a quick buck.  these people are usually marketers who know how to spot a hot trend and sell the heck out of it.  They usually know little about the actual science behind their products, and want to produce a product that costs as little as possible.  While it may be hard to classify many of these as straight up scams some of them should be considered such.  Whether you classify them as a scam product, or just a low quality supplement, they should be avoided at all costs.

When you are shopping for the product online you should be very careful to avoid the free trial resveratrol scam. These sites will use high pressure sales tactics to sell you a low quality supplement, and then automatically bill you an outrageous amount of money each month if you fail to cancel. This is the most common form of supplement scam online, and is used to sell many different wonder drugs, not just resveratrol. These scams can easily be identified by the free trial offer, and will often have a countdown timer saying “Offer only available in the next 10 minutes!”.

While there may be a few shady people out there trying to scam you, do not let that scare you away from a supplement that might be able to offer you some legitimate benefits. A few bad apples should not spoil the whole bunch.

There are many companies out there who legitimately believe that this supplement is one of the most powerful and beneficial supplements out there.  These companies to provide the best possible supplement for their customers that will help ensure they get the most resveratrol benefits.  Instead of trying to get your money once, they hope to build a long-term relationship with you once you start to experience positive benefits from their high quality supplement.  Does not always easy to find information on these great companies online, but I have done most the work for you with my article on where to buy resveratrol.

Dr. David Sinclair and resveratrol will forever be linked. Dr. Sinclair is a biochemist at the Harvard Medical School who focuses on studying the genetic components of aging. His research led him to study a normally inactive set of genes called Sirtuins. Previous studies on the life extension diet called Calorie Restriction (CR) showed that when these genes are activated they trigger a survival mechanism that can help fight off age related diseases, and possibly extend life. Dr. David Sinclair was convinced that some naturally produced compound would be able to activate these genes in humans. After testing over a thousand different compounds he finally found one that worked; resveratrol.

Resveratrol is naturally produced by grapes, and is found in the highest concentration in certain varieties of red wine. Ever since the French Paradox was discovered a daily glass of red wine has been recommended for its heart friendly benefits. For those who are not aware, the French Paradox is simply an observation that the French people suffer from significantly lower rates of heart disease than Americans, even though they eat a diet that is much higher in fat. Before Dr. Sinclair’s resveratrol discovery it was not known exactly why red wine would cause this paradox.

Dr. Sinclair believed he was very close to the anti-aging breakthrough he had been searching for most of his life, and almost immediately began studying the effects resveratrol had on lower life forms. Studies he conducted in 2003 showed that resveratrol could significantly increase the lifespan of yeast and worms.

In the most famous resveratrol study to date he fed two groups of mice a high fat diet (60% of calories from fat) and fed a third group a standard healthy diet. One of the groups being fed the high fat diet was also given 22 mg/kg of resveratrol. The mice given the high fat diet with no resveratrol suffered the typical repercussions normally associated with obesity. They were incredibly lethargic, started to develop diabetes, and died much earlier than the other two groups. Both the high fat plus resveratrol and standard diet groups had a 30% lower risk of death than the high fat group, and the resveratrol group greatly outperformed the high fat group in fitness tests.

Sinclair started a company called Sirtris with the goal to find a drug that would prevent and reverse the effects of age related diseases. A human study conducted by Sirtris showed positive results of their resveratrol drug on patients with diabetes. They are now in the process of developing and testing a synthetic resveratrol supplement, called SRT501, that is supposedly 5x more powerful than current resveratrol supplements. As of the time of this posting SRT501 is in Phase II testing and human studies are being conducted. In 2008 GlaxoSmitheKline bought Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, INC for a sum in the neighborhood of $720 million.
Dr. David Sinclair got his name out to the general public when he agreed to conduct an interview on the CBS show 60 Minutes. In that interview he said that he believed that we have turned the corner on extending the length of a healthy lifestyle into our 90s or 100s. He said that the goal was to have 90 year olds who were able to live the lifestyle that a healthy 60 year old now lives. His most intriguing quote was “People will live active healthy lives, and die quietly in their sleep. That’s really the aim here with these medicines”.

Dr. Sinclair was so certain about the health benefits of resveratrol that he started to take these supplements himself even before human studies were conducted. In fact, the exact amount he took was a big topic of debate in the anti-aging community. There has been some controversy on the optimal resveratrol dosage, so many were interested what an expert in the field thought was best to take himself.  At one point he revealed that he was sticking to a 5 mg/kg daily dosage, which worked out to be about 315mg per day. Much more research has been done between then and now, so we have no idea how much he is currently taking or how much he believes one should take each day.

Even before scientists started studying the French paradox, which hypothesizes that those who drink red wine on a daily basis have a lower instances of heart disease, we have known that red wine can be beneficial to our health when taken in moderation. Studies have revealed that an antioxidant found in the skins of grapes, called resveratrol, is one of the sources for those health benefits.

This polyphenol is produced by plants to fight off bacteria and harsh weather conditions. It looks as if some of these protective properties are transferred over to a us when we consume it. Some of the benefits of resveratrol include; an extended active life, prevention and possible treatment of diabetes, a reduction in dementia, improved endurance, and increased athletic performance.

Sure, all of these benefits sound too good to be true. Is this discovery too good to be true, or is it really the next step in increasing our life span? If it is for real, than how does resveratrol work?

Unlike other “miracle cures” it seems that resveratrol actually has some weight behind it. Scientists have conducted a series of tests that have shown this substance to increase the life of yeast, worms, fish, and mice. However, it was not until they figured out why it worked that they really started to become excited about the prospect of human usage.

To understand how this works you need to know a little bit about the Calorie Restriction Diet. Of all the methods we have tried to use in order to live longer, calorie restriction is one of the few methods that is universally believed to be effective. The idea behind this lifestyle, is that by eating 15%-30% less food (this often comes out to about 1400-1700 calories per day) you can extend your life 1 to 2 decades. Those on the diet also show lower levels of cholesterol, lower fasting insulin levels, higher levels of mental focus, and increased endurance. They were also able to maintain this into old age. If those benefits sound exactly like the resveratrol benefits, you are starting to understand why this works.

Obviously, this diet is no fun which is why so few people actually stick with it long term. When scientists began to study different compounds looking for are one that mimicked the results of calorie restriction, they struck gold when they learned resveratrol did just that.

Dr. David Sinclair, from the Harvard Medical School, conducted tests where mice were fed an incredibly high fat diet. Half of those were given resveratrol as well. A control group was fed a normal healthy diet and did not take any supplements.

The mice on only the high fat diet showed similar symptoms to what happens when humans become obese. Their activity level greatly decreased, their livers swelled and became incredibly fatty, they started to develop diabetes and cancer, and died at an early age.

Those on the high fat diet with resveratrol showed none of these symptoms. In fact, their levels in all aspects of health were nearly identical to those of the mice eating a healthy diet.

This study seems to show that getting a healthy dose of resveratrol can help fight off the damages of obesity and give you the benefits of a calorie restricted diet, all without changing what you eat.

This is not to suggest that taking this supplement gives you free reign to eat all the doughnuts, pizza, and potato chips you want. The mice in the study might not have had as many problems with obesity, but they still were incredibly fat. It just means that we may now have a real chance to extend our life span without suffering through the hunger and pain that comes with severely limiting calories. A healthy life style combined with resveratrol may allow us to stay healthy and active decades longer than we can now.