Weight Loss Fads - Part 5 - What is Resveratrol?

<< Part 4 - What is Hoodia? <<

In the wonderful world of weight loss supplements you come across many different “miracle” pills, but do they really work?

I’ve been doing research on 4 different types of popular weight loss supplements to find out if they’re really worth all the advertising thrown at us.

Should you buy into it? Well, maybe… but only after you’ve done some research into the supplement you’re thinking about taking.

I assume that you’ve already read the first 4 parts of this series and are ready to find out about the last supplement that I’m researching: resveratrol.

When I hear the word resveratrol, I’m already thinking it’s some kind of medicine or supplement name; it just has that medicinal ring to it. But what exactly is resveratrol?

Resveratrol is naturally produced by a variety of plants whenever they have a fungal infection or are under attack from bacteria. They pretty much create their own medicine that is toxic to bacteria and fungi; it’s a natural defense to help certain plants survive. Resveratrol can be found in:

• Red Grapes; only in their skins
• Red Wine; much more resveratrol than in white or rose wines
• Red Grape Juice
• Blueberries
• Cranberries
• Peanuts or peanut butter
• Japanese Knotweed
• White Hellebore

There are two types of resveratrol (trans- and cis-), but trans-resveratrol seems to be what people are supplementing with because humans absorb it well.

But why are people so interested in these supplements?

Once you realize what resveratrol does for these plants and you happen to eat fruit and nuts from those plants, you might start to wonder if you can actually benefit in the same way as the plants do.

This seems to be the scientific train of thought because, once they found out that resveratrol was in red wine, scientists wondered if resveratrol could once and for all explain the “French Paradox”. The French eat a lot of saturated foods and smoke a lot of cigarettes but yet have a low death rate from coronary heart disease. Quite the paradox, isn’t it?

What else do the French consume a lot of? Wine! They have the world’s second largest total area reserved for vineyards and are one of the biggest wine producers. So could the resveratrol in the red wine they’re consuming be why they’re not dying from coronary heart disease?

The jury’s still out on that one because the research just doesn’t support it fully. When we consume trans-resveratrol it’s absorbed quickly but very little shows up in our blood stream. It’s been shown to increase the lifespan of fish, fruit flies, worms, yeast and even mice, but has yet to prove the same for humans.

In a test tube it’s been shown to have “heart protecting” effects like anti-inflammatory effects and enhanced production of nitrous oxide. But there’s a problem: that was at very high doses! Like I said before, when we consume resveratrol, very little makes it to our blood stream. So it’s hard to duplicate these results outside of a lab. Scientists just aren’t convinced that they’ve found the key to the French Paradox yet.

In labs, resveratrol has been found to slow the division of human cells caused by certain types of cancer like:

• Breast Cancer
• Colon Cancer
• Pancreas Cancer
• Prostate Cancer
• Stomach Cancer
• Thyroid Cancer

Which is great, but they’re still unsure if they can duplicate these findings in a human body. Going back to French habits; it has not been found to slow the effects of lung cancer caused by cigarette smoking.

It has been shown to slow cancers in animal studies, but we’re still waiting for conclusive evidence that it will be as beneficial for a human to supplement with resveratrol.

So this supplement seems promising at first, by what it does for plants and animals, but we’re just not sure of the benefits for humans yet.

Let’s move onto the next step in my research and find out where the weight loss claims come from for each supplement.

>> Continue Reading Part 6 - Acai Berry Weight Loss Benefits >>