Comprehensive Library Of Resveratrol News

It was a year Americans learned why “their genes are not their biological destiny.”
It was the year Americans began to be sales pitched on the idea of using home test kits to identify gene derived maladies.
It was a year when biologists continued to point in all directions, claiming there are 300 theories of why humans age and they still don’t have any idea which one is correct.
It was the year when the promise of a red wine resveratrol anti-aging pill was “short lived.” But did this pill fizzle, or was it being swept under the rug?
It was the year of the downfall of the Sirtuin1 gene as the “holy grail” of anti-aging.
It was the year telomeres — those end caps on chromosomes — intrigued many and early adaptors excitedly searched for telomere lengthening agents — yet telomeres may just be another misdirection. Maybe longevity seekers ought to be looking at molecules that prevent double-strand DNA breaks rather than telomere lengtheners.
It was a year where mTOR inhibitor drugs (whatever they are) began to be mentioned in place of resveratrol as an anti-aging pill. Yet the mTOR inhibitor drug rapamycin is fraught with side effects and could never be used in a healthy population.
It was a year when microRNA began to be recognized as the predominant way our genes are switched on and off.
It was a year when funding for anti-aging technologies began to dry up and the prospect of an anti-aging pill began to fade.

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A professor of medicine says “aspirin is, by a long way, the most amazing drug in the world.” He was responding to a recent study published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, which found the 20-year risk of death was reduced by about 10 percent for prostate cancer, 30 percent for lung cancer, 40 percent for colorectal or bowel cancer and 60 percent for esophageal cancer among those taking aspirin.

Aspirin protected against gastrointestinal cancer the most, particularly for cancer in the upper versus the lower gastric tract.  When data from eight studies were pooled, researchers found that cancer deaths among those who took aspirin in doses as low as 75 milligrams a day were 34 percent lower after five years. There was no increase in benefit at doses of aspirin greater than 75 mg daily.

Furthermore, while there has been hesitancy to use aspirin because of bleeding gastric ulcers offsets its ability to prevent strokes and heart attack, now doctors say “the reductions in deaths due to several common cancers will now alter this balance for many people.”

One doctor suggests healthy people could start taking a small 75 mg dose of aspirin every day from the age of about 40 or 45 and continue doing so until they reached around 70 to 75, when the risk of the aspirin causing stomach bleeding rises.

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We no longer live in an age of genetic doom — that the sequence of nucleotides on the DNA ladder that we inherited from our forefathers dictates our biological future.  Rather we live in an age of epigenetic enlightenment.  Our genes can be switched on and off, that is, their ability to produce proteins (called gene expression) can be influenced by diet, temperature, radiation exposure, etc.  This is called epigenetics.

In this regard, biologists know that small molecules can enter cellular machinery and alter gene expression and thus produce a pattern of gene activity that produces healthy longevity.

To the surprise of geneticists, there are only 25,000 human genes, with half of these being redundant or inactive genes, which suggests the genome (library of genes) is manipulatable.

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Apple polyphenols extend life in roundworms similar to resveratrol, which points to small molecules that control iron and copper as exerting these life-prolonging effects.  Resveratrol is solely a copper chelator but also controls iron indirectly.  This report further substantiates the over-mineralization theory of aging.

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Since 2003 when a Harvard researcher extolled the SIRTUIN1 gene as the holy grail of anti-aging, this gene has only diminished in its stature.  Out of a library of about 25,000 human genes, about 832 are believed to be involved in producing longevity as evidence in calorie-restricted animals whose lifespan is approximately doubled.  Longevity involves many genes, not a sole gene target.

Resveratrol, the red wine molecule, which has been claimed to stimulate the SIRTUIN1 gene to produce proteins, has been shown to protect brain cells in models of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

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Human and Experimental Toxicology, 29(12) 1016–1017

Commentary on ‘Resveratrol commonly displays hormesis: Occurrence and biomedical significance’

Dipak K Das
Cardiovascular Research Center, University of Connecticut, Farmington, CT, USA

Abstract

Resveratrol, a grape skin and red wine-derived polyphenolic phytoalexin, exhibits hormetic action delivering numerous health benefits at lower doses while being detrimental at higher doses. Epidemiologic and clinical trials need to be based on the clear understanding of hormetic health benefits of resveratrol.

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