It hasn’t been long since the Dietary Guidelines told us that drinking red wine in moderation could in fact be healthy for us. Now scientists are finding out that the compound responsible for the healthy effects of red wine, called Resveratrol, can be synthetically produced in a high enough concentration that it will stave off many diseases that are associated with the later years in life.
Dr. Christoph Westphal and David Sinclair, a biochemist at Harvard are developing a drug that potentially will add twenty healthy years to our old age as it extends our life spans. Where did they find the compound to try on that gene? Did this exist on the market before these guys got $750 million from Glaxco Welcome for this recipe? It didn’t seem to start with the French Paradox…the phenomenon that French people, who drink a lot of red wine and eat a lot of fatty, high cholesterol food, have a very low incidence of heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments that generally affects those over fifty years old.
They tried at random thousands of different compounds until they struck gold with Resveratrol. Dr. Westphal “Googled” the compound and was flattened to see it had so much to do with Red Wine. So that might be an answer to the French Paradox. It seems that the mice that are on this stuff are able to eat fatty foods, yet stay in shape and healthy.
The discoverers claim that this compound activates a gene they call the survival gene, the sirtuin gene -and this in turn keeps the body up, doing a better job of fighting off disease. It may have to do with the properties within a grape that allows it to fight off disease, mold and so on. But, don’t white grapes have to battle these same enemies? How do they do it without Resveratrol?
- www.dietceutical.com
- www.shaklee.net/donnacopeland/vivix
- www.egxsuperfruits.com
- www.alisonlairdcraig.nutrametrix.com
