Red wine lovers, rejoice! Another positive health benefit of resveratrol has been found.
After a year long study conducted on mice, scientists at Virginia Tech found that the powerhouse polyphenolic compound found in the skins of red grapes may slow the effects of aging. Scientists studied two-year-old mice, who are considered old by mouse standards. They treated them with resveratrol for one year, and looked at the synapses that are essential for voluntary movement because of how they relay motor commands from the spinal cord to muscles. The scientists found that resveratrol preserves muscle fibers and slows the effects of aging.
They also found that the reservatrol mimicked the effects of diet and exercise. But don’t give up your gym routine for a daily bottle of red just yet — these benefits were the result of small amounts of the polyphenol.
“In wine, resveratrol is in such small amounts you could not drink enough of it in your life to have the benefits we found in mice given resveratrol,” Valdez said in a press release. “These studies are in mice and I would caution anyone from blasting their bodies with resveratrol in any form. The next step is to identify the mechanism that enables resveratrol to protect synapses. If we know the mechanism, we can modify resveratrol or look for other molecules that are more effective at protecting the synapses.”
The positive effects of resveratrol can be reversed with excessive drinking, leading to larger health scale problems such as ulcers, liver disease, and high blood pressure. Stick to getting your resveratrol benefits from a single glass of red; we’ll raise one– and just one– to that.
