Posted on 11/26/2008 11:03:14 PM PST by neverdem
A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.
The finding, published online Wednesday in the journal Cell, is from a group led by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School. It is part of a growing effort by biologists to understand the sirtuins and other powerful agents that control the settings on the living cell’s metabolism, like its handling of fats and response to insulin.
Researchers are just beginning to figure out how these agents work and how to manipulate them, hoping that they can develop drugs to enhance resistance to disease and to retard aging.
Sirtris, a company Dr. Sinclair helped found, has developed a number of chemicals that mimic resveratrol and are potentially more suitable as drugs since they activate sirtuin at much lower doses than resveratrol. This month, one of these chemicals was reported in the journal Cell Metabolism to protect mice on fatty diets from getting obese and to enhance their endurance in treadmills, just as resveratrol does.
Though the sirtuin field holds considerable promise, the dust has far from settled. Resveratrol is a powerful agent with many different effects, only some of which are exerted through sirtuin. So drugs that activate sirtuin may not be as splendid a tonic for people as resveratrol certainly seems to be for mice.
The new finding concerns maintenance of the chromosomes, the giant molecules of DNA that make up the genome...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
SIRT1 Redistribution on Chromatin Promotes Genomic Stability but Alters Gene Expression during
By clicking on the keyword sirtuin, you can get an older article on resveratrol.
Interesting story. This research all started with the French Paradox and a couple of years ago they confirmed that resveratrol has these effects on yeast. Looks like they’ve now progressed to mice. It will be interesting if the effect is the same with other mammals, like humans...
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/resveratrol/
NHS want to close smoking room for terminally ill patients in Birmingham
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A few weeks ago I heard that while red wine was good for you in moderation, the red wine from Italy, Argentina (and one other place down there) was particularly free of certain metals they were finding in wines outside of those areas.
It all boils down to anti-oxidents ... find the most powerful and efficacious .. I used to MLM pycnogenol ... works wonderful, but too many people think all mlm is AMWAY, so it’s a tough sell.
but not as enjoyable.
Is there a commonality with other purple fruits; blueberries, blackberries, etc ?
Ive read bluberries are high in antioxidants.
Probably Chile
There are some interesting articles in this search.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-hptb5&p=resveratrol%20grape%20juice&type=
Ck
The Cocoa bean is 11 times higher in antioxidants than blueberries.
Ping for later.
I've wondered about that too. Sad the MSM accepts everything without question when it's "research" from a liberal institution. Don't journalists have any sense of curiosity anymore?
No. (And I worked my last 20 years before retirement in the business.)
Journalists today remind me of the car designers - instead of doing your own work and using your own mind - you steal designs/stories from the competition. Ergo - we get mongrel cars and the same story regurgitated from the primary source through all the outlets - with no fact checking or research.
Indeed, we are now a world of second-handers.
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