I’ve been taking a high dose of resveratrol every day for about a year now, so I was happy to see this article in wired about new strong evidence of its benefits in anti-aging.

“For the first time, we can mimic caloric restriction in an otherwise healthy animal,” said study co-author David Sinclair, a Harvard University biologist and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. “That’s been the goal of the field for decades. We didn’t know it was possible to let an animal eat whatever it wants, but still get the benefits. We now have evidence.”

Regardless of mouse weight and diet, resveratrol worked wonders. At two years of age, or the mouse equivalent of senescence, the mice were more coordinated than their non-dosed counterparts. Their bones were thicker and stronger, their eyes free of cataracts, their hearts beating strong. At the cellular level, tissues displayed gene-level changes almost identical to those produced by caloric restriction.

“The mice had tremendous health benefits from taking resveratrol,” said de Cabo. “If any of those parameters translate to humans, it will be tremendous.”

via tradereyal

California researchers have found that people think more expensive wines taste better, regardless of how they taste.

“We have known for a long time that people’s perceptions are affected by marketing, but now we know that the brain itself is modulated by price,” said Baba Shiv, an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and one of the authors of the study.

I am going to repackage box wine and sell it for $1000 a bottle. Maybe this is why people won’t drink box wine even though it tastes similar to other more expensive wines.
Based on this study you might think that it would be better to sell wine at expensive prices, but Fred Franzia has made a lot of money selling it cheaper than everyone else.

On the chemistryworldblog, there is a post by a reader about resveratrol. It sounds almost identical to my experience:

…after two weeks the results were subtle but undeniable. He said that he had more energy during the day, was more alert throughout the day and was sleeping less but waking up more refreshed.

I still take the 500mg capsules every morning and have been doing so for months. Any other readers taking it? If so, I’m interested in your experience. Leave a comment or send me an email.

SIRT, the company that researches anti-aging and resveratrol, was up 7.8% today and is starting to look pretty nice:

Today there was news about their new resveratrol-like pill.

Their latest research shows these experimental drug compounds — which are 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol — helped reverse diabetes symptoms and reduce insulin sensitivity in two different studies in diabetic mice and one in rats.

The discovery may have implications well beyond diabetes drugs, which is itself a $19 billion global market.

“We will make a drug to treat one disease, but it will, as an added bonus, protect you against most of the other diseases of the Western world.”

Now this is a stock that people could get excited about.

When I was in Ireland, I had a Guinness every day - often with a warm bowl of fisherman’s chowder.
I was surprised to learn that sales of the world’s #1 stout are down 30% in Ireland since 2001.
I guess there is a growing trend of people wanting lighter, blander, “refreshing drinks.” Not me. I had a pint of Amstel light last weekend and it tasted like beer-flavored water. On the label it should say “30% beer.”
Anyway, even though sales are down, Diageo’s chart looks pretty strong, up 50% in the last two years:

Maybe people are switching from stout to box wine for the resveratrol.

My wife let me know about a short NPR broadcast about resveratrol. Nothing really new for uglychart.com readers, but it’s interesting to hear from David Sinclair (of SIRT), who I posted about previously.

“This is proving what is potentially possible with drugs of the future,” Sinclair says. “So I’m saying that there might be a time when you could be prescribed a pill for, say, diabetes and as a side effect you might be protected against heart disease, cancer, and maybe even Alzheimer’s.”

The reason why I take resveratrol is that the possible benefits outweigh the risk. There are very few negative side-effects reported from the drug in animals, while there are lots of positive findings. There is always some risk, but it is a gamble I’m willing to take - especially after trying it and noticing some positive changes in myself.

“If you look at how much red wine, for example, you would have to consume,” Kaeberlein says, “it’s something like 300 glasses of red wine a day to get a comparable amount of resveratrol to what was given to the mice in this study.”

Sinclair says it’s actually more like 100 glasses. But that’s still a lot of drinking.

The pills I take are 500mg - the equivalent of 250 glasses of red wine.
I am a little concerned about taking resveratrol over a period of many years. Who knows what the side-effects could be from taking it for so long. But it is also possible that it could have substantial positive health benefits - like prevention of cancer, more endurance, and reduced effects of aging.

Update: here is another story about resveratrol on NPR.

I just got three more bottles (40 capsules each) of 500mg resveratrol in the mail today. It could be nothing - it could even be doing some harm - who knows? But it seems to me that I have more endurance, and I feel healthier. Tom says he’s already lost 10 pounds in the little time he’s been taking it.

By the way, University of California, Irvine cancer researchers have found that resveratrol “inhibits genes linked to the development of sporadic colorectal cancer.”

I bought a case of Wolaver’s organic Brown Ale the other day. I like it. I used to drink cheap beer because I am a cheap bastard, but I noticed that I felt worse after drinking the beer than I did after drinking wine. So I switched over to only boxed wine. Tom told me there are a lot of preservatives and chemicals in a lot of beers, which made me stop drinking cheap beer altogether and kind of turned me into a beer snob.
When I was in Chicago last weekend a friend gave me an organic stout he bought at Whole Foods, which was delicious. So I bought Wolaver’s, which isn’t as good but is still pretty good. $32 for a case of 24. For comparison, a 5-liter box of wine is $12.
Wolaver’s beer is pretty good, but their website totally sucks.

My faithful readers know that I am a drinker of boxed wine because it is less expensive, tastes bad, and I don’t care what other people think. So I very much enjoyed reading this article on cnnmoney about Fred Franzia, the king of cheap wine.

He’s worked in the wine industry his entire life, but he calls the grapes “varieties” instead of “varietals.” For a while, he has me convinced that he’s planted some weird grape I’ve never heard of called “moh-ver-dee,” until I realize he’s talking about the Rhône varietal mourvêdre. Driving by a guy selling fruit along the side of the road in the hot sun might fill some with pity, but Franzia looks on with pride. He pokes me with a thick finger and says, “That’s a real businessman.”

I love it - this guy is great. “Who do I have to impress?” he says, while “he utters very few sentences that don’t contain at least one curse word.”

While many winemakers say they hate Franzia because he’s a bully or because he’s crude or because he operates close to one side or another of the law, Franzia believes it’s because he exposes their pretentiousness. “Sniff it and smell it and taste the inner body,” he says, scoffing. “They’re trying to confuse the consumer. You either like it or you don’t like it. You shouldn’t make them feel like second-class citizens. I love to sell something you don’t have to give an excuse for.”

He’s a hard woker - 100 hours a week. And he says “All I care about is making money.” - I think Ayn Rand would love him. I like this quote of his - “Success is easy if you think of it like rust: It’s inevitable if you keep at it. You look for magic moments, but they’re not there. Guys can claim they are, but that’s bullshit.”