Ever since Ponce de Leon landed in Florida, the search for the fountain of youth has focused on water. Now, scientists say it may be found in a glass of wine. Vinotherapy was invented at a French spa in Bordeaux, came to America in Caudalie skin care products. Its popularity soared when the famed Hotel Meurice in Paris opened a Caudalie day spa, which has had to be expanded to handle demand.
In Sonoma wine country, the grape of choice is pinot noir, said to flourish in the valley’s climate. Tannic wine has long been known to contain substances called polyphenols that help maintain healthy blood vessels. Recent research led scientists to declare that a substance called resveratrol found in red wine protects mice from obesity and the effects of aging.
Let’s drink to resveratrol. Created by nature in grape skins and other plants, resveratrol could become a nutritional supplement for humans. The stuff can be purchased now commercially, but so far has only been tested on mice that were stuffed with more resveratrol than even the most ardent oenophile could consume.
Could this be the answer to the famous question of why French women are so thin? Or why the French have fewer heart attacks than Americans?
Grape seed extracts also may be linked to cancer prevention.
Recent research at the University of Colorado found that chemicals in grape seeds significantly inhibited growth of colorectal tumors in both cell cultures and in mice, according to researchers who have already demonstrated the extract’s anti-cancer effects in other tumor types.
Their study, published in the October 18 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, documented a 44 percent reduction of advanced colorectal tumors in the animals, and also revealed, for the first time, the molecular mechanism by which grape seed extract works to inhibit cancer growth. The authors found that it increases availability of a critical protein, Cip1/p21, in tumors that effectively freezes the cell cycle, and often pushes a cancer cell to self -destruct.
“With these results, we are not suggesting that people run out and buy and use grape seed extract. That could be dangerous since so little is known about doses and side effects,” said Rajesh Agarwal, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. “The value of this pre-clinical study is that it shows grape seed extract can attack cancer, and how it works, but much more investigation will be needed before these chemicals can be tested as a human cancer treatment and preventive,” he said.
The skin and seeds of grapes are a rich source of proanthocyanidins, a class of antioxidant flavonoids that remove harmful free oxygen radicals from cells. Grape products (juice and red wine) are known for their heart-healthy effects, especially in lowering levels of blood cholesterol, Agarwal said, and because grape seeds contain higher concentrations of these chemicals, they are widely marketed as a dietary supplement.
Agarwal and his team of investigators were first to report, in 1999, that grape seed extract also has chemopreventive activity against skin cancer. Their subsequent pre-clinical work has shown that the extract also retards growth of prostate cancer cells.
In this study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, Agarwal tested the extract on colorectal cancer, the second most common malignancy in Americans as well as the second leading cause of cancer deaths in this country. They exposed two different human colon carcinoma cells to the extract, and found a dose- and time-dependent inhibition of cell growth.
The folks in Sonoma County may be onto the next big thing.
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