You probably saw the headlines: “New Hints that Red Wine May Slow Aging” said the NY Times; “Red Wine Stops Effects of High-Fat Diet” said the UK Telegraph. Since the study was released today (June 4, 2008), it’s only a matter of time before your local news channel is also touting the benefits of drinking red wine.

But hold on a minute! The articles in the mainstream press are perfect examples of unbalanced reporting. If you take a look at the original study, it’s not about red wine at all. So before you run down to the liquor store to stock up, read the rest of this post and get the whole story.

First of all, you can access the article “A Low Dose of Dietary Resveratrol Partially Mimics Caloric Restriction and Retards Aging Parameters in Mice” by clicking on the link.

Scientists have known for quite some time that restricting the caloric intake of mice increases their lifespan by as much as 10-13%. This technique is known as “caloric restriction” (read more about it here at Wikipedia). This study was trying to find out whether feeding the mice a chemical called Resveratrol could produce the same results as caloric restriction. Here’s what they did:

• Group 1 mice were fed a control diet (84 kcal per mouse).
• Group 2 were fed a control diet plus a low dose of trans-resveratrol.
• Group 3 mice were fed a calorie restricted diet that was 25% smaller than the control diet (63 kcal per mouse).

Tissue samples from all three groups were studied focusing in three areas: heart tissue, skeletal muscle tissue, and brain tissue (neocortex). What they found was that low doses of resveratrol retarded the aging biomarkers by over 90% for the heart, by 26% for the skeletal muscle tissue, and by only 13% for the neocortex tissue. Based on these results, the scientists concluded that resveratrol may be an important tool in helping fight the effects of aging on the heart.

The first thing to note is that this study was performed on mice, not on humans. There is a lot of controversy about whether or not studies such as this can be directly applied to humans since our physiology is much more complex (see the Wikipedia article for more details including potential side effects).

The second thing to note is that resveratrol is present in many foods including grapes (primarily grape skins) – but also in peanuts and cranberries (see the Wikipedia article for more details). Sure, red wine comes from grapes so yes, red wine does contain amounts of the same chemical – but then so does grape and cranberry juice.

The third thing to note is that the mice were found to have a high incidence of liver tumors, presumably due to the high-fat diet. The addition of resveratrol did nothing to prevent that.

The fourth thing to note is that the study does NOT recommend taking resveratrol nor does it recommend drinking red wine. The reasons should be obvious. There are no human studies so the effects of resveratrol in humans is not completely known. Drinking red wine in any kind of quantity may be good for your heart, but it’s not doing your liver any favors.

The fifth thing to note is that, even though resveratrol may eventually become an important anti-aging supplement, good health still comes down to a balanced blend of diet, nutrition, and exercise.

Don’t let the news headlines fool you. There is no “good-health-in-a-pill.” If you drink red wine, drink it in moderation. However, you still have to make good food choices, control portion size, and exercise.

Here’s to your balanced health!

Hiram

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