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Those health improvements of the chemical known as resveratrol—including cardiovascular benefits, greater motor coordination, reduced cataracts and better bone density—come without necessarily extending the animals' lifespan.
Sinclair and de Cabo's team further show evidence that resveratrol mimics the beneficial effects of eating fewer calories. In mice, they found that resveratrol induces gene activity patterns in multiple tissues that parallel those induced by dietary restriction and every-other-day feeding.
" From a health point of view, the quality of life of these mice at the end of their days is much better," said Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging. It suggests that resveratrol may "extend productive independent life, rather than just extending life span."
" I was most surprised by how broad the effects were in the mice," added David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School. "Usually, you focus on slowing down or ameliorating one disease at a time. In this case, resveratrol influences a whole series of seemingly unrelated diseases associated with aging." Sinclair said he expects some of the effect seen in the mice would have even greater impact if they hold in humans. That's because, unlike people, mice usually don't die as a result of heart disease, or suffer from weakening bones.
Earlier studies showed that reducing calorie intake by 30%
Posted July 4th, 2008 by harminka
Resveratrol as a supplement
Since the Dr. Sinclair study was published in Nature a flood of somewhat dubious companies have sprung up selling resveratrol. Most of the dodgy ones have some variation of resveratrol in their name and sell only one or two products. One even makes his capsules in a rented house in Florida. Consumer Lab, an independent testing authority, evaluated the major brands and found many lacking in content and quality. The ones that passed their evaluation were Biotivia, Transmax and Bioforte. A product by Life Extension Co. failed badly with only 26% of the claimed resveratrol. Another brand, Revatrol, had virtually no trans-resveratrol in its supplement. The problem with some of the ones that did pass is that they contain less than 250mg of actual resveratrol which does not conform to the studies and makes them very expensive on a relative mg basis. The ConsumerLab test results are available on their web site.