Anti-Aging In SEED

A fantastic article in SEED by David Sinclair on the potential of resveratrol:

In 2004 my lab teamed up with Dr. Rafael de Cabo at the National Institutes of Health to see if resveratrol could improve the health and extend the lifespan of mice. When middle-aged mice were fed a low-fat diet, resveratrol delayed diseases of aging but did not extend lifespan. When fed a high-fat diet, mice on resveratrol got chubby but stayed healthy — they were less susceptible to diseases we associate with obesity, like type II diabetes. And with a sufficiently high resveratrol dose, they burned enough fat to stay lean. What’s more, the resveratrol mice on the high-fat diet ran twice as far on a treadmill as their unmedicated counterparts, and their remaining lifespan after treatment began increasing by an average of 25 percent compared with the high-fat controls. Notably, in both the obese and the lean mice on resveratrol, there was the clear physiological signature of calorie restriction.

The trouble is, while resveratrol is found in many foods, it is present only in very low concentrations. Someone wanting to get a resveratrol dose equivalent to what we used in our mice studies would need to consume hundreds of bottles of red wine each day. Resveratrol has served its purpose, proving the possibility of inducing the physiology of dieting and exercise with a small molecule. Now pharmaceutical companies are working on synthetic molecules that are thousands of times as potent as resveratrol: The race to develop a drug that targets sirtuins is on, though the longterm effect of activating sirtuins in humans requires further research. If the mice studies are anything to go by, the side effects of these drugs could include protection from multiple illnesses, including heart disease, osteoporosis, cataracts, and Alzheimer’s.

Hundreds of bottles of wine you say? I can eat all I want, you say? Bacchus would be pleased.

["The Achilles' Heel of Aging - SEED]