Starting today, I am eating resveratrol supplements with my breakfast.
I feel good about this. After following anti-aging developments for years, and flirting with some ideas like calorie restriction, this is the first time I have applied a promising technology to myself. I do not mind saying that I went ahead and made a little ceremony of my first dose, eating the pills with cold water while standing under a hot shower. From tomorrow on, they'll just go down with my morning coffee.
Effects so far: some of my burps taste funny. Stay tuned for updates.
My plan, henceforth, is to continue following the news about anti-aging treatments and applying the single sanest-sounding one to myself, letting it complement a lifestyle of varied diet, frequent exercise, low stress, high friendship, and all that good stuff. I suspect, though, that there'll only be so many more candidates before one treatment really blows the lid off.
Still, I can't help but feel a little self-conscious about this. Many of my friends are apathetic about, or even resistant to, the idea of clinical anti-aging therapy. I can understand where they come from, because it's based on countless generations of the shared human condition, and that's awfully strong stuff. It doesn't help that decades of advertising have confused the definition of "anti-aging" with the promises of beauty creams or plastic surgery. This can make the desire to truly eliminate aging seem like a shallow pursuit, when really it's no shallower than wishing to eliminate any other debilitating, degenerative disease.
The meme that aging is treatable started working its way into the mainstream just as I was turning 30. I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in auspiciously timed opportunity.
Here's to the future, eh?
Hi jason...
What brand of resveratrol are you taking?
About two weeks ago, I started taking 500 mg a day of bioforte - haven't noticed anything yet. There seems to be a lot of conflicting news about the best brand and dosage is.
I'm not sure there would be anything to notice, especially in such a short time frame. What visible effects were you expecting?
There is a lot of conflicting information about brands, because not only is the whole market completely unregulated but any effects of the drug are literally unknown on humans, still - it's really just hope in a bottle. I'm taking the supplements more as a way of shoring up a wager than as a known positive effector of my health.
All that said, I've been reading Resveratrol mailing lists and forums since I made this post, and some companies are at least coming out as less snake-oily than others. In time, I plan on making a follow-up post on my obervations.
As for my brand, I too am using Biotivia, and have mixed feelings about them. When my order took a while to ship, they sent along a free bottle, which was nice. But pro-Biotivia spam has been appearing on this blog and others, as well as on Wikipedia, and representatives from that company get in somewhat embarrassing fights with their prime competitor (RevGenetics) on mailing lists and forums. I am likely to try a different brand later.
Hi again....
I read on other sites that some users are seeing increased energy and endurance, among other effects. I was wondering if this was normal and how long it took to feel these effects....I don't know how long these users have been taking resveratrol or what dosage...
FYI - I contacted the administrator of the resveratrolnews site. He said there was only two brands he would reccoment - Longevinex and Jarrow. Longevinex contains Quercetin, which is suppose to counter the effects of resveratrol - according to Biotivia. And Jarrow tablets only contain 16mg of resveratrol, combined with other ingredients like vitamin C, green tea extract, etc.. I emailed him back stating these concerns...I'll let you know what he says when I get a reply.
For now, I don't think there's any reason to believe that subjective and anecdotal accounts of increased energy and endurance are anything other than the placebo effect. I also wonder if some of these folks are making other slight lifestyle changes too - if they're starting to exercise more alongside taking the supplements, then that will certainly make them feel more energetic, for its own reasons.
I have been taking 1 gram (1000 mg) of R. daily for three weeks now, and I have subjective stories of my own to tell. I have actually been feeling very good, maybe even a little euphoric, most days. However, my life is entering a new phase - I'm in the middle of launching a new business, among other things - so there's a lot of stuff keeping me energized. I'm not ready to hang the credit on the pills.
I started taking one 250 mg resveratrol capsule daily yesterday, the Life Extension Foundation's Optimized Resveratrol. I've noticed a major increase in energy, euphoria, and alertness. While I'm not immune to the placebo effect, this seems very real. When you decide to run up 9 flights of stairs for the heck of it, as I did about an hour ago, something has changed. I was already in decent health, but this is much better. (Age = 54, body weight = 147 pounds, BMI = 25.3 approx).
Taking two pills is not quite enough datapoints to jump to any cause-effect conclusions, surely.
That said, if taking the supplements make you want to exercise more, then that's a fairly solid (if indirect) way to better health. Consider redirecting your new energy away from manic attacks on the stairs and into a regular regimen!
Hi All,
I couldn't help to read with interest your experience with resveratrol and add that recently there has been a lot of media coverage based on recent studies using low doses of resveratrol.
It seemed that everybody came out of the box flying as far as dose was concerned and were and continue to hyper dose resveratrol trying to simulate the same amounts as in the mice studies. All the manufacturers upped the mgs in their offerings to compete against one another for market share.
Nothing could have been the more wrong thing to do. The American propensity to rationalize that 'if a little is good, a lot must be better' has been proven false with the recent studies. We've seen a similar circumstance recently concerning Vitamin E.
In fact, resveratrol is a known copper chelator and copper is necessary for the production of collagen. So creating a copper deficit in your system is not an intelligent thing to do. In fact, there have been cases reported of achilles tendonitis from hyper dosing resveratrol. And what is hyperdosing? Probably more than 100 mgs. daily which the studies have shown is about 7 times more than one needs for the biological effectiveness of resveratrol. Let's put it this way; Anything more than 15mgs. at a time is senseless.
One product, Resvantage, refused to join the 'mad dosage scramble' in order to compete for market share. They manufacture a 15mg liquid resveratrol supplement which is encapsulated in an oxygen free environment to insure the integrity of the resveratrol.
The current low-dose studies have showed that they did the right thing.
I am personally an enthusiast because I have seen Resvantage enhance my exercise endurance and lower my cholesterol (by 37 pionts over a 5 month period). My mental acuity is also far better than it was previous to my taking Resvantage and I'm sleeping better.
I take one capsule twice a day at 12 hour intervals; breakfast and dinner, because resveratrol has a reasonably short half-life and I want to insure that it's coursing through my blood pretty consistently, day and night.
The hyper dosers would be wise to re-think their strategies. Problems caused by excessive supplement dosing don't show up right away and they could be doing irreparable harm to themselves.
Here are write-ups of the recent studies:
1. Business Week - Low Doses of Red Wine Chemical May Fight Diabetes, October 02,2008.
(http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/archive/608674.html?chan=search)
2. Science Daily - Substance In Red Wine, Resveratrol, Found To Keep Hearts Young, June 08, 2008
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080604074908.htm)
I have mayor issues with the resveratol's bioavailability. Seems the bioavailability of resveratrol isn't that good >
Mol Nutr Food Res. 2009 Feb 4. [Epub ahead of print]
Pharmacokinetic and safety profile of trans-resveratrol in a rising multiple-dose study in healthy volunteers.
Almeida L, Vaz-da-Silva M, Falcão A, Soares E, Costa R, Loureiro AI, Fernandes-Lopes C, Rocha JF, Nunes T, Wright L, Soares-da-Silva P.
Department of Research and Development, BIAL - Portela & Co SA, S Mamede do Coronado, Portugal. Fax: +351-22-9866192.
This was a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study to investigate the pharmacokinetics and safety of trans-resveratrol. In four groups of ten healthy adult subjects (five males and five females), two subjects were randomized to receive placebo and eight subjects to receive trans-resveratrol 25, 50, 100 or 150 mg, six times/day, for thirteen doses. Peak plasma concentrations of trans-resveratrol were reached at 0.8-1.5 h postdose. Following the 13th dose of trans-resveratrol 25, 50, 100 and 150 mg, mean peak plasma concentration (C(max)) was 3.89, 7.39, 23.1 and 63.8 ng/mL and mean area under the plasma concentration-time curve (AUC(0-tau)) was 3.1, 11.2, 33.0 and 78.9 ng.h/mL. Interindividual variability was high, with coefficients of variation >40%. Trans-resveratrol half-life was 1-3 h following single-doses and 2-5 h following repeated dosing. Trough (C(min)) concentrations were less, not double equals1 ng/mL following 25 and 50 mg, 3 ng/mL following 100 mg and
This was a great discussion on resveratrol. I've got a resveratrol information site at Benefits-of-Resveratrol.com and will go back to my site next and make sure I've discussed all these comments and sources.
I'll be sure to talk about you on future updates. Thanks for great information. What happened to Jason's resveratrol usage, in the end?
Dan Morris