Sherry Chandler » Sometimes there is some good news
Sometimes there is some good news
from Nicholas Wade in the NYTimes:
Can you have your cake and eat it? Is there a free lunch after all, red wine included? Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging report that a natural substance found in red wine, known as resveratrol, offsets the bad effects of a high-calorie diet in mice and significantly extends their lifespan.
Their report, published electronically today in Nature, 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, should people respond to the drug as mice do.
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 tend to enjoy a high-fat diet yet suffer less heart disease than Americans.
So — apparently you can get this resveratrol as a dietary supplement. Or I guess you could eat a lot of fresh grapes. But what would be the fun in that?
I like this advice:
Several experts said that people wondering if they should take resveratrol should wait until more results were in, particularly safety tests in humans. “It’s a pretty exciting area but these are early days,” said Dr. Ronald Kahn, president of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Information about resveratrol’s effects on human metabolism should be available in a year or so, he said, adding, “Have another glass of pinot noir — that’s as far as I’d take it right now.”
And alas, I’ve been in research long enough to know that what looks good in mice doesn’t always look so good in humans. So don’t buy stock in reservatol yet. It’s still a good idea to reduce fat and calorie intake and treat yourself to a glass or two of red with dinner.
See also Reed Hundt on this subject.
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