What resveratrol DOES do....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 1-22-2013

As some of you know, taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol that is found in red wine and other foods, was once thought to slow aging by boosting the sirtuins that you otherwise had to eat near starvation amounts of food all the time to do.

The findings testing this were negative to mildly positive and nothing to write home about or act on.

BUT, there WERE also findings that taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol was strongly heart protective.

A bit over two weeks ago I got an email from Dr Al Sears.

That email contained WHY taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol is so good for your heart.

And, it showed that taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol does slow your rate of aging somewhat BUT in a different way than the original speculation.

1.  Taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol….“stimulates the production of adult stem cells called endothelial progenitor cells.

These stem cells are so powerful, they have the ability to seek out, repair and heal the trouble areas in the lining of your blood vessels called the endothelial cell barrier or ECB.”

“Since the release of a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, scientists and researchers have focused more and more on the power of these endothelial progenitor cells.

And for good reason. The study from the New England Journal of Medicine showed a “strong correlation” between the number of progenitor cells circulating in the blood and a person’s overall risk of heart disease.1

The connection is so strong, I could make the case that the number of progenitor cells will become the new “marker” of cardiovascular health, even replacing the two major forms of cholesterol, HDL and LDL.

Simply stated, the more of these progenitor cells you have, the more likely you are to avoid disease. This view is supported by the fact that patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and/or cardiovascular disease have low levels of progenitor cells.”

“In many recent studies I’ve read, I find that resveratrol increases the number of these endothelial progenitor cells.3,4,5,6”

This is dramatically important because without these stem cells to safely repair your inner surface of your blood cells, the endothelium, here’s what happens.

This causes inflammation and the back up repair system of pasting cholesterol into your blood vessel walls as an emergency fix gets triggered.  (It happens a bit even before that and much more easily if you have lots of small particles of LDL.)

That causes your blood vessels to become gradually blocked or to have chunks break off later and block all blood flow causing strokes and heart attacks.)

BUT these progenitor stem cells apparently create a repair WITHOUT any of that heart attack, stroke, and vascular dementia causing plaque build up!

So the finding that taking resveratrol helps make that happen is truly a HUGE discovery!

2.  “Resveratrol also has the distinction of activating telomerase, the enzyme that rebuilds your telomeres.”

THAT directly slows and has even been shown to partly reverse aging!

It isn’t sirtuin release.  But it does slow aging.

As many of you know, telomeres are the caps at the ends of your strands of DNA. 

When your telomeres are long enough, all the copies of your DNA are virtually identical and as good as the old ones they replace.

BUT when your telomeres get too short, the copies stop being exact and do NOT work as well as the originals.  Then every time they get copied, the copies get worse.  Then your cells don’t work.  Oops!

You are more likely to get sick and eventually all your systems no longer work.

BUT, keeping your telomeres long prevents this aging process and can even reverse it somewhat!

Conclusion:

1.  If you take 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol, your protection from blood vessel diseases and the heart and brain damage and diseases caused by blood vessel disease goes WAY up. That’s because you get blood vessel repair that DOES NOT cause those diseases!

2.  If you take 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol, your telomeres stay longer which ALSO prevents these same disease and slows your rate of aging!

Not bad!

I’m glad I take the 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol.

This research certainly makes it look like a VERY good idea!