Roman soldiers wrapped their battle wounds in red wine and considered wine to be their best medicine. Over two-thousand years later, 88-year old Madeline May is just now catching on to what the Romans apparently knew centuries ago.
Madeline has been bed-ridden due to joint problems for many years now. With the aid of a walker she can barely hobble to the bathroom and back. Because of the pain, it takes about 5 minutes for her to stand erect. A trip to the bathroom and back is exhausting.
That was the “old” Madeline May. Today Madeline launches herself out of bed, is back in the kitchen washing dishes and doing house cleaning, and wants to take a trip to Montana to visit relatives. Madeline uses her walker now only out of habit. What brought about the sudden change?
There are over 100 brands of resveratrol pills on the market, but only one is selling vigorously ---ResV. And that is because of online fraud.
With the appearance of widespread interest in resveratrol in the aftermath of extolling report on CBS’ 60 Minutes, the Barbara Walters show and the Oprah show, budding entrepreneurs see an opportunity to add resveratrol to everything ranging from skin creams to bottled water. But the whole boom in resveratrol appears to be falsely created.
Something rather remarkable is happening in biological research. It involves study of reward centers in the brain and it spells promise for people who wish to overcome unhealthy habits such as tobacco use, alcohol over-consumption, dependency upon street drugs and even overeating.
It’s too enticing to resist. The offer has just arrived in your email -- a free trial sample of a red wine pill that promises to extend human life, a pill that was endorsed by “Dr. Oz,” seen on Oprah and CBS’ 60 Minutes, and researched by leading universities and shown to cure cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, control weight and eradicate wrinkles. And it’s free!
For the first time researchers have demonstrated that relatively low doses of the red wine molecule resveratrol (rsz-vair-ah-trawl) reverse chemically-induced gastric ulcers in animals. Higher-doses of resveratrol delayed but did not prevent or reverse tissue damage.
Currently, heart transplantation is the only reliable means of replacing lost muscle tissue following a heart attack but is limited by the number of donors and cost. Because heart muscle cells are not rapidly replaced following a heart attack, researchers have been investigating stem cell technology in hopes of replacing damaged cells. [Transplantation Review (Orlando). 2009 Jan; 23(1):53-68]
Donor cell transplants emerge as a promising strategy to regenerate diseased heart muscle cells (called cardiomyocytes). However, stem cell therapy has produced inconclusive and contradictory results. [Current Opinion Organ Transplantation 2009 Feb;14(1):79-84] There are many drawbacks and hurdles, including high cost, that need to be overcome before stem cell therapy for the heart can be offered in the clinic. [BioDrugs 2008; 22(6):361-74]
Now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated that heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) are slowly replaced over time, about 1% per year, not fast enough to restore healthy function to the heart following a heart attack, but sufficient to demonstrate regenerative potential towards the introduction of molecular medicine.
The luster surrounding the red wine molecule resveratrol isn't fading, but the growing body of pseudoscience being created by online hucksters, as well as exaggerations by scientists who have a commercial interest in a resveratrol-like drug, casts a pall over the excitement of a maybe-it’s-real-this-time anti-aging pill.
Few Americans who go online have escaped the barrage of spam advertising for one particular brand of resveratrol (rez-vair-ah-trawl) pills, which has within the past month or two become the leading brand by sales volume.
What six years of growing science, front-page coverage by the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and a CBS-TV 60 Minutes special report couldn’t do, spammers and the blogger accomplices did – create a swelling demand for red wine resveratrol pills.
