Red Wine: Not Just Good for Your Heart, but Keeps You Young as Well!

You can imagine that living in Italy -- drinking red wine is as common as brushing your hair. Eating a meal without having a glass of red wine (or two or three) just doesn't happen. So finally, after decades -- or maybe it was centuries - of wine drinking, scientists noticed that Italians (specifically) and Europeans (in general) had a lower rate of cardio-vascular ailments. Why? Because the medicinal properties of red wine -- specifically a little molecule called RESVERATROL is good for your heart.

Now researchers are saying that Resveratrol is not only good for your heart but it has the potential to be good for a whole lot more.

The Low Down:

It wasn't too long ago that scientists demonstrated that Resveratrol kept overfed mice from gaining weight, literally turned them into the equivalent of Charles Atlas and seemed to slow down their aging process as well. Suddenly having a glass of red wine with your dinner was the rage. Problem is -- depending on who you listen to -- you would have to drink a heck of a lot of red wine in order to get enough Resveratrol to really impact your health. (which has me scratching my head regarding why researchers continue to tout drinking red wine with your dinner in the first place). Anyway, leave it to researchers at the National Institute on Aging (www.grc.nia.nih.gov)who are hoping to develop a concentrated version of Resveratrol that comes in pill form and will have enough of the molecule to ward off everything from diabetes to old age.

According to an article on CNN Online (www.money.cnn.com) the NIA isn't the only one pursuing the benefits of Resveratrol. There are a lot of pharmaceutical companies that are eyeing the prize as well. This could well turn out to be the Holy Grail of anti-aging. Resveratrol is in every grape so you certainly can't patent it. But figure out a way how to PACAKGE it in a way that it helps humans in the same way it helped overweight mice and -- bingo -- you're on your way to an invite on David Letterman.

Unfortunately, according to www.lewrockwell.com, a Resveratrol drug would probably take between 5 and 10 years to be developed and get approved by the Food & Drug Administration.

Who the heck wants to wait that long?

If Resveratrol is so revolutionary -- and it supposedly takes only about 3 to 5 milligrams of Resveratrol (about the same amount provided in a glass of red wine), to produce the same results in humans as it does in mice (this claim from www.resveratrol.com) then why aren't people just sloshing down a 5-ounce glass of red wine (preferably from pinot noir grapes) with lunch and dinner?

Well, come to think of it, that's exactly what Resveratrol.com is saying. At least until a successful pill version comes out. A glass or two or three of red wine every day and try not to fall down on your face.

According to the article on money.cnn.com, the secret is in the wine-making process. The fermentation process extracts Resveratrol from the skin of a red or purple grape and then it is kept from spoilage in a nitrogen-flushed bottle. The air doesn't get to the Resveratrol in a bottle of wine so it can't oxidize. Grape skins provide Resveratrol, but not in an extracted form. The Resveratrol disappears soon after exposure to air during encapsulation.

The challenge then: figure out a way to keep those properties intact, successfully put Resveratrol in a pill and forget about those wrinkles around your eyes.

For now, red wine is the only reliable source of Resveratrol. By the way, white wine has ten times less Resveratrol.