Just sip it: #75 of 101 healthy reasons to drink wine

75. Many of the benefits of drinking wine have been attributed to resveratrol and the other polyphenols, and with good reason. The list of beneficial properties of resveratrol could probably fill our list of 101 reasons to drink wine by itself. And to judge by the number of companies marketing resveratrol supplements, you would think that drinking wine has become a quaint custom of a bygone age since it seems no longer necessary in order to reap the benefits. But not so fast! As I have pointed out, there is a lack of clinical studies confirming resveratrol's usefulness as an oral supplement, and one of the reasons may be that it is very poorly absorbed from the digestive tract. It is however taken up quite well through the lining of the mouth, so by sipping your wine, swirling it around to get the full flavor essence, you are actually getting more resveratrol in your system than by swallowing quickly. So those expensive pills are probably just making a more expensive end product of digestion, if you catch my drift.

Comments

New site! https://agebetterwithwine.wordpress.com/

Thank you for your interest in wine and health! For updates please visit my new page https://agebetterwithwine.wordpress.com/

Revisiting resveratrol: new findings rekindle anti-aging debate

Just when we thought the bloom was off the rosé for resveratrol, the anti-oxidant polyphenol from red wine with multiple anti-aging properties, along comes new research giving life to the debate. But first a bit of background: As I detailed in my book Age Gets Better with Wine , it is well-documented that wine drinkers live longer and have lower rates of many diseases of aging. Much or the credit for this has been given to resveratrol, though there isn’t nearly enough of it in wine to explain the effects. Nevertheless, I dubbed it the “miracle molecule” and when it was reported to activate a unique life-extension phenomenon via a genetic trigger called SIRT, an industry was born, led by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, quickly acquired by pharma giant Glaxo. The hope was that resveratrol science could lead to compounds enabling people to live up to 150 years and with a good quality of life. But alas, researchers from other labs could not duplicate the results, and clinical studies disa

Which came first: Beer or wine? (or something else?)

Actually neither beer nor wine was the first fermented beverage, and wine arguably has a closer connection to health, but recent evidence indicates that humans developed the ability to metabolize alcohol long before we were even human. The uniquely human ability to handle alcohol comes from the digestive enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH4. A new science called paleogenetics identifies the emergence of the modern version of the ADH4 gene in our ape ancestors some 10 million years ago. Interestingly, this corresponds to the time when our arboreal forebears transitioned to a nomadic lifestyle on the ground. We went from swinging from tree limbs to walking upright, and the rest is history. Understanding the circumstances that led to perpetuation of the ADH4 mutation may contain clues to what made us human in the first place. How the ability to metabolize alcohol made us human Paleogenetecist Matthew Carrigan has an idea about how this happened . Arboreal species rely on fruit tha

wine and health

Search This Blog