Does Resveratrol Really Work?
Does resveratrol really work?
Since its isolation from the roots of Veratrumgrandiflorum O. Loes in 1940, scientists have found this active chemical in many plants (these compounds are in four main classes: isoflavones isoflavonoids, flavonoids flavonoids, butyl ether stilbenes and lignans lignans), resveratrol is butylated stilbenes. it and its glucoside glycosides are beneficial to human health and have even been shown to have antioxidant, anticancer, antitumour and estrogenic/anti-estrogenic activities. Resveratrol is not only found in red wine, but also in purple and red grapes, blueberries, cranberries, mulberruy, lingonberries, peanuts, pistachios, and Japanese tiger root knotweed (an anti-inflammatory and antiplatelet agent in Japan). This substance is made by plants to fight bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms, to resist ultraviolet radiation and to ensure that plants can survive in nature!
So where is resveratrol extracted from these days? No, no, no! It is extracted from the brewer's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae through chemical or biotechnological synthesis.
In 2003, Professor David Sinclair's team at Harvard Medical School published their first discovery that resveratrol increased cell survival and slowed aging in yeast (and later in mice) by activating a "longevity" gene called SIRT1. One scientific hypothesis was that resveratrol turned on the genetic code that makes sirtuins (ancient proteins found in virtually all species), activating silencing of regulatory proteins and the genes that code for them, thereby initiating a response to fight disease and extend life.
In later studies in mice, resveratrol was found to prevent skin cancer, protect against high blood pressure and heart disease, improve insulin sensitivity on a high-fat diet, lower blood sugar and obesity, and protect the nerves and brains of test animals.
However, one thing to keep in mind is that the dose of resveratrol in experiments is always much higher than the amount of resveratrol consumed in the daily diet. The dose that improved the health of the mice was almost equivalent to 100 to 1,000 glasses of red wine.
Prof Sinclair also points out that pharmaceutical companies have now synthesised thousands of new synthetic molecules based on this hypothesis, which are a thousand times more effective than resveratrol.
What about studies in humans?
A 2014 article in JAMA Internal Medicine by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine analysed the levels of resveratrol naturally contained in foods in the diets of about 800 men and women aged 65 and over, and the levels of resveratrol metabolised in their urine, expecting to to find high levels of resveratrol in the healthiest populations.
A lot of preliminary human studies on type 2 diabetics seem to support the effectiveness of resveratrol in improving blood sugar and reducing insulin resistance. However, when looking at these studies, I again found that they all included people who were on medication, so further research is needed to confirm whether the blood sugar improvement comes from resveratrol or the medication.
A few clinical trials have looked at specific biological indicators such as levels of antioxidants, heart rate variability, blood flow to the brain and the amount of cancer proteins.
Looking back at the research on resveratrol, we see that it is mostly limited to microbiological, animal and cellular studies (cell culture or yeast, fruit flies, short-lived turquoise flounder or mice).
