Resveratrol - Why Wait?

Last Sunday, Jan. 26, on CBS, 60 Minutes, they featured a research team and story about Resveratrol. They called it the Fountain of Youth pill and talked about how it turns on the survival gene that extends life by decades and prevents lots of those dreaded age-related illnesses that ruin your life and finances. The researchers saw the possibility of 90 year-olds looking, feeling, and being able to do things like 60 year-olds.

And what is Resveratrol? It is a natural substance in the skin of grapes that protects them from the invasion of bacteria and it turns out it is good for us too. The universe, it seems, has many of these mutual benefit arrangements between plants and us. How considerate!The researchers then announced that it would take about 5 years to turn this into a drug at the cost of about three-quarters of a billion dollars. That’s B for Billion. Think big cost for those pills. The 60 Minutes reporter failed to ask the next most obvious question: If it is already in nature and we know how powerful it is in promoting health, why do we need to make it a drug?

On top of that, to make it a drug you have to turn it into a chemical toxic substance. It won’t be able to go from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the new drug approval protocol without first demonstrating how much will kill half of their laboratory animals. It is call LD 50 or Lethal Dose 50.

Should we just drink more red wine instead? I don’t know how well Resveratrol survives the processing and aging of red wine. Does it remain biologically active and do we know how much you get in a glass of red wine? Does it vary with the winery? I love my glass of red wine with dinner. Yet, how much would I have to drink to get enough Resveratrol to make a difference?

For me, I’ve been getting Resveratrol for about a year now in my supplement, in capsule form. With this new data I will continue for sure. With this kind of good news, why wait? Good science is so important. If you are with me, don’t get just any Resveratrol. Make sure the science is there and it is natural and still alive.