Advance Reality

The Achilles’ Heel of Aging [SEED Magazine]

Posted on 03. Jan, 2010 by Alex in Mental Noise

During my daily scramble to flush all of my free hours down the dirty toilets of the internet, I accidentally found a SEED magazine article which includes a great basic breakdown of why resveratrol is so important to the fight against aging.

In summary: sir2, a human enzyme, has two functions: controlling gene expression and repairing broken DNA. Over a human’s lifetime, more and more DNA becomes broken, and more and more sir2 is used to repair it, leading to shortage of sir2 for gene expression regulation. The resulting lack of gene expression regulation over time leads to diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.

The theory then is that resveratrol, an ingredient in red wine, activates SIRT1, the gene which codes for sir2. So with enough resveratrol, our bodies could produce enough sir2 to both repair DNA and regulate gene expression. France’s high consumption of red wine, and therefore resveratrol, is the currently popular solution to the French paradox.

For more on this and the recent resveratrol studies on mice, check out the SEED article.