Brent Kearney

This week, there was a bit of a splash in science news about results of a study out of Professor David Sinclair’s lab at Harvard (Oberdoerffer, et al.) — “potential universal mechanism of aging” discovered, was the media spin. A salient bit of the report for many people was that resveratrol (rez-vair-a-trol) was used to stimulate the production of sirtuin in mice, which in turn allowed them to live up to 46% longer. Does this mean we should all be supplementing with resveratrol?

The Wikipedia article on resveratrol is filled with contradictions on its efficacy as a fountain-of-youth supplement. Some studies have it extending the life of some creatures by as much as 56%, while others showed no significant results at all. I had been convinced by Ray & Terry that it was a promising enough compound to add to my supplement regime. However, since some studies failed to show health benefits in mammals, and others showed that there is practically no evidence of efficacy in humans due to resveratrol’s lack of bioavailability, I grew skeptical and stopped buying it.

After researching this latest finding from Harvard, I was intrigued to discover that those in the know — namely, Dr. Sinclair and his team of Resveratrol researchers — personally supplement with the substance. The bioavailability problem can apparently be mitigated by microencapsulation, which protects resveratrol from oxidation and damage from heat and light, and allows it to by-pass the harsh digestive environment of the stomach so that it can be absorbed into the blood stream when it reaches the intestines. Including quercetin in the formulation also helps absorption.

There may be side-effects to supplementing with resveratrol, however. One of them may be ligament and tendon troubles:

It is possible that the anti-angiogenesis effect of resveratrol can cause ligament or tendon issues; those tissues are so poorly supplied with blood a reduction of angiogenesis could delay or prevent healing, and a series of micro-tears or other injuries would compound the situaton. Quercetin has a similar effect on agiogenesis.

That is from the sci.life-extension discussion group. If resveratrol slows exercise recovery time for tendons and ligaments, it is probably not a good thing for athletes to take. As a rock climber and distance runner, I’ve decided against it.

On another note, a recent study showed that, like resveratrol, endurance exercise can have similar SIRT1 effects! Note also that sweating is a natural iron chelator. The moral of this story is that intense exercise will do you much more good than resveratrol will, and will save you a lot of money too.

Here are some relevant links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol
• http://www.fightaging.org/archives/001020.php
• http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/28/2315209
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081126122203.htm
• http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2006…
• http://www.rayandterry.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=RESVER