How red wine extract helps prevent breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's
by Frann Leach
Researchers in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and the UK worked together on a project codenamed Paradox, researching the health benefits of red wine extract. Their findings are nothing less than astonishing.
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For many years, doctors have wondered why France has such a low incidence of heart disease, despite the high saturated fat content of the French diet. But now, after two years of research across Europe, it appears that we have found out. As many suspected, the high levels of wine consumption in France provided the clue.
Although called "red wine extract", the substance used for this study (and from which red wine extract supplements are produced) is in fact a by-product of the wine making process: the skins and seeds left over after the grape juice has been extracted for use in making wine, known as pomace. This is rich in anti-oxidants, particularly tannins, polyphenols, catechin and resveratrol.
Having researched its properties, the scientists developed a method for creating an extract which could easily be packaged and transported - without losing its beneficial properties in the process.
The Paradox research project ended five years ago, and in the period since then, numerous studies have confirmed the findings, and in some cases extended them. For example a Canadian research project discovered that resveratrol helped to prevent blood cells from sticking together, explaining at least partly how it protects against heart disease. Another by MJ Burkitt and others shows that resveratrol scavenges free radicals in a different way to other anti-oxidants, which seems to be particularly important in preventing oxidative stress leading to Alzheimer's disease. A study in China found that resveratrol performed better in cases of spinal injury even than prednisone (a steroid) when injected, by inhibiting enzymes that can cause further damage.
Anti-oxidants are known to be important in reducing cell damage, because of their role in destroying free radicals. They are helpful to the immune system, reducing the risks of many different types cancer as well as diseases of the cardiovascular system, and also preventing many age-related degenerative disorders of the eyes and nervous system. It now appears that a broad spectrum of anti-oxidants provides much better protection, because different anti-oxidants work in different ways to scavenge different types of damaging free radicals from the blood stream.
For example, polyphenols have been shown to prevent cancers of the skin, breast, oesaphagus, lung, pancreas, stomach and liver. Other chemicals found naturally in Red Wine Extract help to boost the immune system and fight tumours. As already mentioned resveratrol helps to prevent heart disease and Alzheimer's disease, and it is also being proposed as a treatment for cancer.
So it's good news for those like me, who prefer not to drink wine. We can use red wine extract to fight for our health, and carry on drinking what we prefer.
At the time of writing (October 2007) Healthy Direct is offering Provinols™ Red Wine Extract at less than half the normal price in their Autumn sale.
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