Submitted by Armen Hareyan on Jun 5th, 2008
Drinking red wine in moderation with meal helps keep your heart younger and fight heart disease because of resveratrol that is found in red wine.
A team of researchers from University of Wisconsin-Madison examined middle-aged mice and the effect of red wine on their hearts.
Resveratrol is a polyphenol contained in wine, grapes and pomegranates. 'French paradox' itself is based on this chemical, saying that a glass of red wine with every meal helps people fight heart diseases. Resveratrol is always driving scientists' attention, because it's a chemical with interesting and powerful function. In this study researchers looked at how resveratrol affects heart health.
It is known that aging is associated with changes of function or expression of a particular organ's genes. Mice in this study showed to have the changes for heart genes slowed down when given to certain doses of red wine.
It is already known that a low calorie diet has the same effect of anti-aging on both humans and animals. This study shows that red wine chemical has the same effect on organ aging process as low calorie diet has.
Dr Tomas Prolla from University of Wisconsin-Madison said: "There must be a few master biochemical pathways activated in response to caloric restriction, which in turn activate many other pathways - and resveratrol seems to activate some of those master pathways as well."
However, researchers mention that just drinking red wine will not stop aging process, because resveratrol doesn't stay in body long enough to have positive affect. The chemical is being quickly cleared out from the body by liver. To reach the anti-aging effect people must drink gallons of red wine, which will lead to numerous diseases, indeed. This new research gives an idea of developing a chemical similar to resveratrol which can stay longer in body and slow down heart aging without harming other organs.
Source:
Ruzanna Haroutiunyan 