Red Wine Chemical Reduces Effects of Obesity

Red Wine Health Benefits

Natural foods, red wines, grape skins and peanuts have a compound called Resveratrol. Researchers say Resveratrol may hold the secret to being fat and happy - for a mouse, at least, and boost athletic endurance. A new study in Nature magazine says resveratrol helped mice live as long and as well on a high-fat diet as mice that ate healthier foods.

US Scientists studied three groups of one-year-old mice. That is middle aged for a mouse. They fed one group a healthy diet of foods low in calories and fat. Another group ate high-fat, high-calorie foods.

The third group also ate a high-fat diet - but with resveratrol added to the food. At first these mice were as slow and unhealthy as the ones eating fatty foods without resveratrol.

However, in time, they began to show signs of good health comparable to the mice on the healthy diet. They also lived as long as those mice. And they lived at least fifteen percent longer than the mice on the high-fat diet without resveratrol.

The mice that ate high-fat foods alone showed signs of diabetes and heart disease. In humans, these two diseases are often linked to aging. But being obese can make them happen sooner.

David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, led the study. He studies ways to control aging, and the National Institute on Aging helped support the study. He also says there is a serious need for something to help obese people who are unable to lose weight.

Several biotechnology companies are hoping to create a treatment that will act as the resveratrol did in the mice. Professor Sinclair says researchers are a long way from developing such a thing. But a company he helped start, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, is testing the safety of a resveratrol treatment in people with diabetes.

Resveratrol has been shown to extend the lives of other organisms including yeast, roundworms and fruit flies.

The mice in this new study received huge amounts of it - many, many times more than a person would get from a glass of red wine.

Red wine contains more resveratrol than white wine.

Many health food stores sell resveratrol. But experts say no one knows if it will work the same in humans as it did in the mice. And they say no one knows if there are long-term dangers in taking large amounts.