Anyone see where I put my glass of cab sav?

WINE .... with David Bray

What you have to do, she said, is 10 things. One is to drink cabernet sauvignon. My informant, a life-long good friend, had been to a lecture about Alzheimer’s disease. A subject that will interest all of you as you age.

Important precautionary elements, she said, quoting a learned professor’s talk at the Brain Institute, Queensland University, last month, are: being in love, sleep, black chocolate, cabernet sauvignon, travel, exercise, crosswords (especially cryptic), puzzles such as Sudoku, tea and coffee, and taking different routes to travel to the same destination.
I have no problems at all with nine of them. But I did wonder why cabernet sauvignon, to the exclusion of shiraz, merlot, and all the other reds?
After hunting around the usual “research” sources I think I’m on the right track and the clue is resveratrol.
Resveratrol is a natural antioxidant found in red wine, known to protect against a range of illnesses and diseases including neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or other dementias, cancer and heart disease and more recently documented for its role in extending lifespan. It is also found in peanuts.
Red wines usually enjoy extended contact time with the skin of grapes during fermentation so they have higher levels of resveratrol. It’s these elevated resveratrol levels in red wine that are causing much of the buzz in many studies suggesting red wine consumption may have a variety of health benefits.
Recent reports from the USA tell us of one study in which patients from one hospital are to make 10 visits over the next year to Georgetown University Medical Centre in Washington, DC, one of 26 sites nationwide affiliated with the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study.
“Participants will be given either a placebo or capsules of pure resveratrol, found in the skin of red grapes, tomatoes, dark chocolate and nuts. Studies on non-humans have shown it activates a gene that protects the body and brain from aging. The greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s is aging. Researchers will do baseline tests to identify biological markers of the disease and then other tests to determine if it is progressing,” says Laurie Ryan, program director for the National Institute on Aging’s Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials program.
“Alzheimer’s is not an overnight process. Symptoms don’t appear until years after the disease has started. So the thought is if we can delay it from starting or progressing, we can add quality years to the end of life.”
By the end of the study, participants receiving the resveratrol will be given 1000 mg twice daily. That’s a level of dosing that can’t be duplicated by sipping wine or eating bits of chocolate.
“We’ll be testing levels equivalent to drinking 1000 bottles of wine a day,” says Georgetown’s R. Scott Turner, the study’s director. “We’re trying mostly to determine the safety of that level, but I think it will be safe. Once we determine that, other studies would still have to be done before anything could be developed for the consumer, but this is a big step.”
Thirsty work, this. Now what were we talking about?