Drink to this: red wine may help you live longer
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Posted by The Herald on November 03, 2006 at 07:40:14:
JAMES MORGAN November 02 2006 Lab report: How's this for a hypothesis: the Holy Grail will be found at Murrayfield this Saturday. No, I'm not referring to the Calcutta Cup.
The quest to find the elixir of long life and health ends at the annual Oddbins wine fair, according to a new study published today in Nature magazine. Harvard scientists have discovered that a chemical in red wine may allow us to eat as many calories as we like, without ever suffering from diabetes or several other ills. In short, we could have our cake and eat it. Guilt-free gluttony would no longer be a fantasy 每 providing, that is, you wash down your fish supper with a bottle of Beaujolais. What's more, they suggest, the compound is tipped to be the first in a new breed of life-extending drugs. The magic ingredient, known as Resveratrol, is a polyphenolic compound found in the skin of red grapes and, therefore, in vin rouge. In the Harvard study, mice fed a diet akin to coconut cream pie for every meal showed a striking increase in both health and survival, when their grub was supplemented with the chemical, a natural antioxidant. Both groups of mice were fed on a high-calorie diet (60% from fat). Both ended up obese, but the mice fed with Resveratrol enjoyed a longer, healthier lifespan, showing no signs of obesity-associated disease, such as insulin resistance and heart disease. In fact, their lifespan was almost as long as mice fed on a normal, healthy diet.
"The mice on Resveratrol have not just been living longer," says Professor David Sinclair, the study's co-author: "They are also living more active, better lives. Their motor skills actually show improvement as they grow older. The health benefits we saw in these mice may mean we can stave off age-related diseases in humans, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Only time and research will tell."
But hang on, is this really news? After all, we've been toasting red wine for its health-giving properties ever since the discovery of the French paradox, in which doctors wondered why our Gallic cousins suffer a low rate of coronary heart disease, even though their diet is so rich in saturated fats. The answer, they suspected, lay in the culture of drinking a glass of red wine with meals. What a happy coincidence. In the age of health-shakes and no-carb diets, the suggestion that red wine could heal was, well, heartening. And many subsequent studies have linked our favourite bottle of plonk, or at least the phenolic antioxidants within it, to almost every aspect of vitality and wellbeing. Central to it all is Resveratrol, which has been linked to (deep breath) preventing stroke, thwarting lung cancer, preventing deafness, building healthy teeth and even delaying the menopause. So yes, it would be fair to say that red wine is good for you, even though each glass contains only 0.3% of the relative dose given to the gluttonous mice. But David Sinclair and his colleagues were searching for something more 每 a compound which could actually prolong our healthy lifespan.
"The goal is not just to make people live longer" he says, "It's to see eventually that an 80-year-old feels like a 50-year-old does today."
The link between diet and lifespan has been known since the discovery in the 1930s that reducing calorie intake can increase the lifespan of rodents by up to 50%. Mice fed on low-calorie diets not only had more energy, they also showed delayed onset of age-related diseases. The trouble is, this phenomenon has never been convincingly demonstrated in humans. Besides, starving ourselves is not a strategy which is likely to take off with the majority of Westerners, so Sinclair and his team were searching for something more practical 每 a drug which mimics the effect of calorific restriction on the body. The breakthrough came in 2003, when Sinclair found that Resveratrol could extend the lifespan of yeast by 60% by activating on a pathway of genes known as the Sirtuins, which mediate longevity and appear to have a role in repairing liver damage. Subsequent work showed that the compound had a modest increase in the lifespan of flies and worms, and a pronounced effect in fish. Humans share a similar sirtuin pathway, and following the mice study, human trials of Resveratrol are now under way 每 led by Sinclair, who has a large stake in a private firm which will sell it.
So, could this be the first in a new range of life-extending drugs in humans? "It is difficult to predict whether Resveratrol will be effective in humans", says Matt Kaeberlein, of the Department of Pathology, University of Washington. "But if Resveratrol doesn't make the grade, it is not the last hope of gerontologists, or necessarily even the best. Studies of other, potent antioxidants are under way at the National Institute of Ageing." But Resveratrol is already available to buy as a nutritional supplement on the internet. So should we take it? Kaeberlein urges caution because the safety of taking it at high-dose levels, comparable to those given to the mice, is yet to be established. In the meantime, why not take Resveratrol the French way, in boozy rouge? But which vintages are most rich in our magic ingredient? Luckily, Dr Thomas Stuttaford, author of Drink Wine, has done the work for us. Grapes produce Resveratrol on their skins to keep fungi at bay, so, Stuttaford reasoned, the healthiest wines are those which are grown in warm, moist areas where a variety of moulds and fungi can flourish. Wines from Alsace, Beaujolais and Burgundy would fit that bill.
But why take his word for it? I, for one, intend to verify his results by experiment, starting on Saturday. It's not alcoholism 每 its good science (hiccup), so come on, let's all away to Murrayfield. And don't forget your lab coat.
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