A daily glass of wine with dinner may be the fountain of youth--provided the wine is red, and you only drink it in moderation. New research from an academic and industry consortium led by the University of Wisconsin at Madison has concluded that a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates, red wine and other foods called resveratrol prevents the decline in heart function associated with aging. In other words, wine keeps your heart young and healthy even as you age.
More than any other, one specific kind of wine seems to reduce the incidence of Alzheimer's disease.
They call it the "French paradox." The typical French diet is loaded with saturated fats, but the incidence of heart disease in France is very low. Why? The French drink red wine. In this study with middle-age mice, the researchers found that a low dose of resveratrol had a widespread influence on the genetic levers of aging and may confer special protection on the heart.
Specifically, they found that low doses of resveratrol mimic the effects of what is known as caloric restriction--diets with 20 percent to 30 percent fewer calories than a typical diet--that in numerous studies has been shown to extend lifespan and blunt the effects of aging. Previous research has shown that resveratrol does this in high doses. "Resveratrol is active in much lower doses than previously thought and mimics a significant fraction of the profile of caloric restriction at the gene expression level," says Tomas Prolla, a UW-Madison professor of genetics and a senior author of the new report.
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The group explored the influence of resveratrol on the heart, muscle and brain by looking for changes in gene expression in those tissues. As animals age, gene expression in the different tissues of the body changes as genes are switched on and off. In the heart, for example, there are at least 1,029 genes whose functions change with age, and the heart's function is known to diminish with age. In animals on a restricted diet, 90 percent of those heart genes experienced altered gene expression profiles, while low doses of resveratrol thwarted age-related change in 92 percent.
The takeaway: Wine, food or supplements that contain even small doses of resveratrol are likely to represent "a robust intervention in the retardation of cardiac aging," the authors note. The study findings were published in the online, open-access journal Public Library of Science One.
