Resveratrol: the fountain of youth? What you should know.

 I just got back from my wife's grandfathers 100th birthday party.  At the festivities he danced to the music, ate cake, and flirted with the women.  At 100 years of age this should be amazing enough, but when you add to it the fact that he has been drinking, smoking, and eating red meat all of his life you and he has had leukemia for the last 5 years you begin to wonder.

They say that longevity appears to be controlled by a gene-some of us have it switched on; most of us don't.  But is there hope on the horizon in the form of resveratrol?  If you haven't heard of it you should take a few minutes to view the 60 Minutes clip.  In short it is suppose to turn on our survival gene and give us up to 125 years of life.   And since it is a natural supplement found beneath the skins of certain kinds of grapes it is unregulated by the FDIC-good news and bad news.

 As the Latin phrase says, "Let the buyer beware."  The health industry is exploding with resvaratrol claims and counter claims.  Some providers promise you everything from a cancer cure to effortless weight loss.  There are web sites set up to look like places that review health care product but they are really fronts for sellers steering the unsuspecting to their product.  Even the famous Dr. Oz endorses his brand of resvaratrol promising a 15 day free trial.  (Hint: Read the fine print.) What is the truth and where do you find it? 

There are sites including the one with Dr. Oz featured on it that will continue sending you pills and billing your credit card 40$ to 80$ a pop until you specifically stop them.  They do this, of course, as a service for you in case you fail to experience the benefits of there product and do not buy more pills.  

You can't just look for the cheapest resveratrol price on the web. when considering which type of resveratrol to buy you should be aware of how much of the drug will make it into your bloodstream. Paying a few dollars for a lot of pills that do nothing for you is a bigger waste of money than paying a lot for a few pills that actually work. A lot of the resveratrol that you spent your hard earned money on will often times not benefit you at all because it dose not survive the digestion process. Another factor is standardization. The amount of resveratrol in pills are usually standardized at 99% or 50%. While the 50% is much cheaper so are the benefits. If this isn't enough, you need to consider whether you should buy micronized resveratrol or not. When resveratrol is micronized it is basically broken down into particles about the size of a red blood cell. This help with absorption and gets more of the resveratrol into your blood stream-- it also will cost you around 80$ for one months supplies.

Don't buy from over hyped web-sites they often trick you into subscription purchases that keep billing your credit card and sending you pills month after month at $80 a pop.  If you want this service, that's OK but you should be the one to chose it.  Read the terms and conditions section of the web site before purchasing anything.  You can usually find the link to it in tiny letters at the bottom of the web page.  If it sounds like hype that's because it is.

 Should you try pills, liquid, shots or what?  So far it appears that holding a liquid in your mouth and letting it absorb directly into your blood stream through the inside of your mouth is the best way to take resveratrol.  This is known as buccal delivery.  They found the 1 ml of resveatrol taken this way put as much resveratrol into your blood stream as a 250 ml pill taken with a glass of water. The problem with pills is that the stomach, intestines and liver metabolize it so quickly.  So the money you are paying some website to deliver pills to you monthly may simple be wasted.  If you are thinking of getting your resveratrol from wine you can forget it.  In experiments people drinking red wine only had trace amounts of resveratrol in their blood streams.

If you are going to try resveratrol I would suggest you get a good liquid and let it sit in your mouth for a minute or so. Avoid the pills and have a long life.

I hope this hub helps. I wrote it because I have been researching resveratrol for myself.