‘Nature is a treasure trove of compounds’: Resveratrol in Red Wine
Moderation brings about the benefits of alcohol: low to moderate drinking of red wine reduces all causes of mortality, while too much drinking causes multiple organ damage. A new study found out that red wine compound resveratrol demonstrates significant health benefits.
Red wine is worldwide known for the benefits it has on human health and that is due to a complex mixture of compounds, including flavonols, monomeric and polymeric flavan-3-ols, highly colored anthocyanins, as well as phenolic acids and the stilbene polyphenol, resveratrol.
Lindsay Brown, corresponding author for the study and associate professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Queensland, said “studies on the actions of resveratrol, one of the active non-alcoholic ingredients, were uncommon until research around 1997 showed prevention of cancers. This led to a dramatic interest in this compound.”
Cancer prevention, protection of the heart and brain for damage, reducing age-related diseases are just some of the benefits caused by red wine in general and of resveratrol in particular.
Until now the question was what compounds from the red wine produce these healthy effects? Since the answer to that question is becoming clearer with the discovery of resveratrol effects, another question arises: “‘is resveratrol the only compound with these properties?’ This would seem unlikely, with similar effects reported for other components of wine and for other natural products such as curcumin. However, we know much more about resveratrol relative to these other compounds”, said Brown.
Resveratrol is the ‘compound du jour’, according to Stephen Taylor, professor of pharmacology at the University of Queensland. Taylor’s opinion is that not only the red wine has these healthy effects, other natural compounds also, but the fact that humans are more likely to drink red wine that to eat blueberries, makes red wine a research study.
The therapeutic potential exhibited by resveratrol goes from cancer chemoprevention to cardioprotection, as Brown stated: “It sounds contradictory that a single compound can benefit the heart by preventing damage to cells, yet prevent cancer by causing cell death. The most likely explanation for this, still to be rigorously proved in many organs, is that low concentrations activate survival mechanisms of cells while high concentrations turn on the in-built death signals in these cells.”
As mentioned before in the article, resveratrol may aid in age-related disorders, by turning on the cell’s survival path. Age-related disorders include neurodegenerative diseases, inflammation, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
However, the key word in this study is moderation, because if low activation has benefits, high activation increases the process of apoptosis or “programmed cell death to remove cellular debris.”
Further studies on this subject will definitely exist, but to conclude Taylor said “Resveratrol is largely inactivated by the gut or liver before it reaches the blood stream, where it exerts its effects – whatever they may be – good, bad, or indifferent. Thus, most of the reseveratrol in imbibed red wine does not reach the circulation. Interestingly, absorption via the mucous membranes in the mouth can result in up to around 100 times the blood levels, if done slowly rather than simply gulping it down. Of course, we don’t know if these things matter yet, but issues like this are real and generally ignored by all”.
