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Well, that’s certainly an eye-catching title.
Recently in the journal Internal Medicine World Report, researchers reported progress on a very specific family of enzymes called sirtuins, which significantly extend life in such primitive organisms as yeast, worms, and flies. They believe that sirtuins may be able to control such age-related disorders as obesity and type 2 diabetes in humans.
The most important substance capable of activating sirtuins is a component of red wine called resveratrol. However, researchers were quick to note that you’d need to drink two cases of red wine a day in order to get a clinically effective dose of resveratrol.
Here’s the background on resveratrol and longevity.
For years, researchers looking at aging knew that animals fed a calorie-restricted diet lived longer. In fact, certain breeds of mice live up to 50% longer when fed 40% less food. Although clinical observations have shown this also applies to humans, reducing your calories by 40% is a staggering undertaking no matter how well motivated you are (and psychologically may not be worth the reward of added years).
This is where resveratrol comes in. Researchers have found that resveratrol ramps up sirtuins. Last year, researchers from Harvard worked with two groups of mice. The first group was fed a high-calorie diet; the second was fed the same diet but with added resveratrol (as a powdered concentrate extracted from grapes). The result? The resveratrol group lived a full 30% longer than the group without it.
Although I do recommend a daily glass of red wine, it won’t provide an effective dose of resveratrol. Consider Resveratrol Ultra, a product recently introduced by Integrative Therapeutics that contains three times more resveratrol than other brands. The daily dose, one capsule twice a day, contains the amount of resveratrol in 42 bottles of red wine.
I want to add how pleased I am that resveratrol is a natural product–something the drug companies can’t patent and charge you a small fortune for.