Friday, June 1, 2012

I'm aging like fine wine... or am I?


Originally, I was thankful that I had signed up for the first lab session, thinking, “Perfect, now I’ll have something to write my blog about!” But all of the olive oil discussions in class have piqued my interest on food and antioxidants. So here I am, making a compromise by loosely tying my blog to the lab I attended yesterday, while still relating to our class discussions.

Dr. Baratto gave us a lecture yesterday on the application of EPR spectroscopy to study the antioxidant activity in wine. She noted that antioxidants protect from free radicals, which inflict damage in the form of oxidation. Free radicals are pathogenic to our bodies because the oxidation process degrades cells, proteins, and the ends of DNA strands, causing us to age faster (only slightly, but still... doesn’t sound too great). Her description of red wine sounded a lot like olive oil. We've already learned that polyphenols in olive oil act as antioxidants to neutralize the free radicals. 

I decided to look up the antioxidant properties of wine described by Dr. Baratto, and I came across a certain polyphenol called resveratrol. Resveratrol is naturally present in the skin of red grapes and other dark berries. And since it’s in the skin of grapes, it’s therefore in red wine as well. Dr. Baratto said that her EPR results in lab indicated that samples of red wine showed a higher decrease in free radicals than white wine (I found out later that this was because the process of making red wine retains more skin from grapes than the process of making white wine).


Resveratrol is thought to work by activating the SIRT1 gene, which produces proteins that reduce inflammation and oxidation in cells. Oops, sorry... the bio major in me is coming out. 

Anyways, the more I read about resveratrol, the more it sounded just like oleocanthal in olive oil.


          resveratrol                                                                     oleocanthal

The similarities were endless: both are polyphenols, both display the anti-inflammatory effect of inhibiting cycloxygenases, both react with free radicals to reduce disease, both are considered “anti-aging,” both have claims of cardio health benefits, etc. Also, both have been chemically synthesized. In fact, people can take resveratrol “anti-aging” supplements.

Excellent! An excuse to drink wine! But all of these wonderful claims sounded a bit too good to be true. After searching some more, I found studies that cautioned against the intake of resveratrol because while it may work in vitro, when it's actually in the human body it interacts with numerous proteins, and some of these interactions may end up being toxic. Hmmm, sounds like the author of this study talked to the same people who wrote that letter to the editor we read for class today. Also, studies on resveratrol that produced beneficial health results used daily doses of 1 g in human systems. Apparently, 1 g of resveratrol is equivalent to 667 bottles of red wine.  So the health benefits of these clinical studies are outrageously unrealistic. Just like how the daily consumption of olive oil by average humans is only a fraction of that used in oleocanthal studies.

The letter to the editor today cautioned against the presentation of oleocanthal as a miraculous cure-all compound. Maybe researchers should take some advice from this letter regarding resveratrol.


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1 comment:

  1. Nice connection between olive oil and wine. Unfortunately, I prefer wine white which provides less anti-oxidants. Same as my preference in chocolate, the bitter dark chocolate has most the most anti-oxidants and I do not enjoy the taste.

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