How much do you know about the magical effects of resveratrol?

"Drinking a glass of wine every day can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by 50%?" But some netizens said that there was an article before that reported that the resveratrol content in wine was insufficient, so wine was not meaningful to the human body, and the final conclusion was: resveratrol is ineffective. Resveratrol said it was unfair.

Because it is about longevity and aging, resveratrol is a substance we are very familiar with. Currently, most evidence supports that resveratrol can promote longevity and is a healthy substance (similar to metformin). Today, let’s talk about resveratrol.

01. Why oppose the doubts about resveratrol?

There are two main reasons for opposing the doubts about resveratrol:

1. Concept: Resveratrol ≠ wine . Resveratrol is widely present and was first discovered in Veratrol in 1940. Research on resveratrol itself includes human cell experiments, yeast experiments, nematode experiments (sirt1), mouse experiments, and large-scale epidemiological survey data. The author's original article cross-references resveratrol and wine, and even the problem of mutual substitution, which is unreasonable.

2. Logic: "The resveratrol content in wine is insufficient → wine is not of sufficient benefit to the human body → resveratrol is ineffective"

This logic is obviously invalid. The former cannot lead to the latter and cannot form a valid chain of evidence. The reason is the same as 1.

In fact, firstly, Dipak Das himself is not an expert in resveratrol research, but he has close ties with the wine industry; secondly, the research can at most affect him and the brands and industries involved, but it has little impact on the research of resveratrol. Taking Google Scholar as an example, there are 2,800 papers on resveratrol research in just two months from the beginning of 2016.

02. Documentary evidence

I will first attach some top literature to prove that resveratrol is effective .

Jang M, Cai L, Udeani GO, et al. Cancer chemopreventive activity of resveratrol, a natural product derived from grapes[J]. Science , 1997, 275(5297): 218-220.

Baur JA, Pearson KJ, Price NL, et al. Resveratrol improves health and survival of mice on a high-calorie diet[J]. Nature , 2006, 444(7117): 337-342.

Frankel EN, Waterhouse AL, Kinsella J E. Inhibition of human LDL oxidation by resveratrol[J]. The Lancet, 1993, 341(8852): 1103-1104.

Lagouge M, Argmann C, Gerhart-Hines Z, et al. Resveratrol improves mitochondrial function and protects against metabolic disease by activating SIRT1 and PGC-1α[J]. Cell, 2006, 127(6): 1109-1122.

Please note that these papers have been cited thousands of times, which is also a very high number of citations in the biological field. Moreover, they are from the top natural science journals "Science" and "Nature" and the top medical journal "The Lancet" . The last paper is worth mentioning, which is from Cell.

There is a saying in biology that if a person has an article in Nature or Science, then he can be very successful in the field of biology, and if a person has an article in Cell, then he will basically never have to worry about food and clothing for the rest of his life. Nature and Science can have mistakes, but the conclusions of Cell are basically textbook-level, because the requirements of Cell are too high, and basically all current biological methods are exhausted to prove a small biological problem. (In fact, the hits of Google Scholar for the study of resveratrol are 128,000 , which can be said to be the top number of single substance research)

03. How does resveratrol work?

The main function of resveratrol is to fight aging . It is involved in the famous longevity pathway sirt family . Anyone who has studied longevity must understand that this is a very clear longevity pathway. Common longevity pathways include IGF-1, mTOR, and SIRT family.

This is the longevity pathway. Resveratrol participates in this pathway

04. Some experimental evidence

Let me give you a brief introduction here. Aging is currently a hot research area because everyone feels the pressure brought by aging. The extended retirement age and the high incidence of various geriatric diseases have attracted the attention of many researchers.

There are many theories of aging, and there are many biological bases. Generally speaking, they include telomere shortening, free radical problems, immune problems, etc. Among the common aging pathways, there is one pathway that resveratrol happens to participate in, which is the sirt family pathway.

This is a mouse feeding experiment to prove the weight-loss effect of resveratrol (fat loss is one of the keys to longevity, which involves the famous energy restriction longevity theory. Energy restriction (eating less, about 60% full) is currently the only feasible way to obtain a large amount of data on longevity ).

In the figure, c represents chewable food, HF represents high-fat food, and R400 represents resveratrol addition. It can be seen that no matter what kind of food, resveratrol can have a serious impact on the weight of mice.

Resveratrol significantly enhances the oxidative tolerance of mice (free radical theory, Dabao SOD is used to remove free radicals)

Overexpression of the sirt1 homologous gene geln2 in nematodes can significantly extend the lifespan of nematodes

The above content can prove that resveratrol can indeed promote health and delay aging through sirt1, so it is unscientific to deny the role of resveratrol.

05. Resveratrol is not unique to wine

In fact, resveratrol is a non-flavonoid polyphenol compound containing a stilbene structure . It is a phytoalexin produced by many plants when they are subjected to biological or abiotic stress (such as fungal infection, ultraviolet radiation, etc.). It plays an important role in plant resistance to stress. It was first obtained by the Japanese from the roots of Veratrum grandiflorum in 1940. It is widely found in natural plants or fruits such as grapes, pine trees, knotweed, cassia seeds and peanuts. So far, it has been found in at least 72 plants of 21 families and 31 genera .

This is the resveratrol synthesis pathway

06. Don’t regard diet as the only way to health and longevity

The factors that influence health and longevity include environmental factors, personal habits and genetic factors , among which environmental factors are the first, which is why there is the term "longevity town" (longevity concentration phenomenon, such as Bama in Guangxi, Hainan Province, etc.). Existing studies have shown that air, water, altitude, etc. have an impact, while diet is a personal habit, which has an impact on health, but it is not so critical (there are surveys showing that dietary habits do not contribute to longevity. About the survey report on centenarians in Jiangsu Province).

Never treat diet as medicine, that's terrible.

Finally, it has been shown that resveratrol is involved in the following processes

1. Inhibit cancer

2. Reduce fat

3. Cardiovascular disease

4. Delaying aging

In addition to the above documents, the following documents are also included

Baur JA, Sinclair D A. Therapeutic potential of resveratrol: the in vivo evidence[J]. Nature reviews Drug discovery, 2006, 5(6): 493-506.

Gehm BD, McAndrews JM, Chien PY, et al. Resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound found in grapes and wine, is an agonist for the estrogen receptor[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1997, 94(25): 14138-14143.

Park SJ, Ahmad F, Philp A, et al. Resveratrol ameliorates aging-related metabolic phenotypes by inhibiting cAMP phosphodiesterases[J]. Cell, 2012, 148(3): 421-433.