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August 2, 2016: by Bill Sardi
Utopia (Latin = “nowhere”; remains imaginary)
Why don’t we have hydrogen-powered automobiles? H-powered cars are not confined to the drawing board. [Car & Driver] The Toyota Mirai is an H-powered auto ready to sell if public demand could be mounted for tax breaks to build hydrogen fueling stations to replace gasoline powered vehicles. California gave a go-ahead for hydrogen fueling stations, but somebody made sure they didn’t work. [Green Car Reports] But the handwriting is on the wall as the Rockefeller family charities, which made its fortunes on investments in oil companies, are withdrawing all investments in fossil fuel companies. [The Guardian UK March 23, 2016]
Obviously vested interests delay the adoption of clean-burning fuel-efficient H-powered cars. What if Japan, totally dependent upon petroleum from imported sources, adopts H-powered vehicles and China too! Those economies would soar as the cost of transportation and environmental pollution would be reduced, leaving Western nations with an antiquated technology that is only maintained by political payoffs.
Similarly, more than a decade after their public introduction on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, why haven’t resveratrol pills been adopted by modern medicine? The answer to that question may be more political than scientific.
Resveratrol science inside and outside the laboratory is astounding. But vested interests, the so-called medical industrial complex described an article in The New England Journal of Medicine talked about in 1980 (New England Journal Medicine 1980], will only embrace resveratrol on its own terms.
After all, a Harvard professor says resveratrol exerts the biological activity of more than 20 drugs. Imagine the FDA announcing approval of resveratrol for twenty different diseases all on the same day. The pharmaceutical sector of the stock market would tumble.
Just examine a portion of three months of recent resveratrol science:
Resveratrol, at a human equivalent dose of 350 milligrams, worked as well as a statin cholesterol-lowering drug in abolishing tissue destructive oxidation in the kidneys of diabetic rats. [Biomedical Pharmacotherapy June 2016]
In a review of 21 published studies, resveratrol given in a wide dosage range, significantly lowered cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar (glucose) in overweight individuals. [Obesity Reviews July 26, 2016]
The main reason why cancer chemotherapy fails is chemical resistance to therapy. In the search for an agent that will sensitize cancer cells to toxic cancer drugs, resveratrol is described as a very promising therapeutic agent. [Oncology Reports July 11, 2016]
In fact, resveratrol, by virtue of its ability to normalize a biological process called methylation, can be considered a “dietary “epidrug” that exerts anti-tumor activity. [PLoS One June 29, 2016] Resveratrol works additively or synergistically to inhibit cancer growth in conjunction with existing cancer drugs. [Frontiers Nutrition April 2016]
Provision of one-time single dose of 75 milligrams of resveratrol has been shown to improve mental performance among diabetic subjects. [Nutrients July 2016]
Resveratrol is a very weak estrogen (1/7000th the strength of estrogen) but exerts many of the same biological actions as estrogen. In mice whose ovaries were surgically removed to produce menopause, resveratrol improved heart pumping function and reduced the size of an experimentally-induced heart attack. [American Journal Translational Research June 15, 2016]
The combination of the anti-diabetic drug metformin with resveratrol vastly improves blood sugar (glucose) levels and reduces insulin resistance in laboratory animals. [Physiological Reports 2016]
Fibrous tissue that forms after abdominal surgery (adhesions) is common. Adhesions cause tissues and organs to painfully stick together and are part of the wound healing process following surgery. [Surgery Today March 2014] Resveratrol has been found to significantly reduce the formation of adhesions following abdominal surgery in the animal laboratory. [Cell Physiology Biochemistry 2016]
Resveratrol when combined with fat-blocking weight control drugs (Orlistat, aka Xenical or Alli) doubled weight loss (15 lbs.) compared to orlistat alone (7.0 lbs.). [Obesity July 2016]
Resveratrol restores the blood-brain barrier and may help delay or prevent Alzheimer’s disease. [Science Daily July 27, 2016]
Good lord, a world without Alzheimer’s disease, without agonizingly painful surgical adhesions after surgery, with anti-cancer drugs that actually work, without obesity, without such dependency upon drugs. That certainly sounds like a health utopia. Now if resveratrol would only be able to fuel automobiles.
But resveratrol pills aren’t good enough, say researchers. Resveratrol is not biologically available. Resveratrol is not presented in a soluble base like in wine to enhance absorption. Mega-dose resveratrol pills may not be as effective as more modest-dose pills. A report published in The Wall Street Journal says “scientists get closer to harnessing the health benefits of red wine” by development of better pills. [The Wall Street Journal Aug 1, 2016]
To that end, scientists are said to be exploring the combination of resveratrol with other red wine molecules will further promote its biological activity at more moderate doses. The aim, says one scientist, is to “mimic the synergistic effects found in a glass of red wine.”
Examination of the medical literature reveals a resveratrol pill that achieves molecular synergism by inclusion of other red wine molecules, that is more effective and safer in lower doses than mega-dose resveratrol, and that is enhanced via micronization and microencapsulation to optimize absorption and bioavailability has already been developed. That pill was described to a The Wall Street Journal reporter recently. [Resveratrol News. Aug 2, 2016]
A resveratrol-based “health utopia” is within reach should consumers opt for it on their own. Otherwise, adoption by modern medicine would likely require a political revolution.
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