Examining the Science Behind Resveratrol and Cardio Protecting the Heart

According to the Cedars-Sinai website, approximately 1.1 million people experience a heart attack each year. Also known as a myocardial infarction, this medical event cuts off the blood supply to the heart, resulting in damage to the heart muscle. Commonly recommended ways to lower heart attack risk include weight loss, daily exercise and reducing bad cholesterol.

The Mayo Clinic website also mentions resveratrol, a substance found in red wine that could have heart-healthy benefits. As the Linus Pauling Institute points out, however, relatively little is known about the effects of resveratrol in humans, something that Bill Sardi, managing partner of Resveratrol Partners LLC, is trying to change.

When reached by phone, Sardi talked about resveratrol and the proliferation of red wine pills, including Longevinex, a product produced by his company.

Q: What was the initial inspiration for red wine pills?

A: The inspiration started in late 2003, when Harvard researchers said they had connected the red wine molecule with the gene that is activated in a calorie-restricted diet. The gene target was mistaken at the time, but it still started the whole process.

In just this past week, they found the correct gene target. Nonetheless, even though they had the wrong gene target didn’t mean that it wasn’t working. A lot of red wine pills started at that time and today, there are 350 brands in the United States doing a very marginal amount of business.

Q: What are the benefits of taking resveratrol supplements on a daily basis?

A: There’s a lot of promise there and the most recent promise is that it [resveratrol] might prevent mortal heart attacks; we have nothing that works for that at the moment. We’ve known for over a decade that if you use resveratrol in a measured dose-not too much and certainly not too little-that you would be able to ‘cardio protect’ the heart.

The resveratrol pills work in a manner where they are perceived by the body and the heart as something toxic. It’s mildly toxic and it sets off defenses in the heart by releasing certain antioxidant molecules. It’s doing this before the heart attack and, if you have a heart attack, it will be minimized to the point where you wouldn’t die of it. This has been demonstrated by various researchers over a decade and all in the animal lab.

Q: Why haven’t medical researchers conducted clinical trials with human test subjects?

A: There’s a researcher at Brown University, Frank Sellke, who is asking that very question in a recent article. We’ve gone a few years and we don’t even have one human study to prevent sudden death heart attacks. 200,000 people die of that type of event each year. They weren’t known as a high cardiac risk patient; they just keel over and die.

Modern medicine is dragging its feet. The science of resveratrol came into question over one researcher who did similar studies, doing it with Longevinex ®. We are using this to ask the greater public question, which is why we don’t have modern day cardiology telling people that resveratrol, in the proper dose, would cardio protect the heart? If it is safe to use, what would the risk be?

We could translate what we know about animal lab data into humans. If we wait to have a clinical, human-study trial, we are 7, 8 years away, we are going to see a few million people die of sudden, mortal heart attacks before we prove this.

Q: You mention the concept of cardio protecting the heart. How does that work?

A: You can trigger defenses in the heart before the event [heart attack] because one of the chemicals that are released by resveratrol in the heart is called adenosine—it’s a natural antioxidant. Cardiologists, before they go into heart surgery, will give a patient adenosine so that they don’t die on the operating table.

Q: You also have mentioned that there are heart patients with total blockages in the coronary arteries, but no damage to the heart valves. How is this possible?

A: We have a preventive cardiologist in New Jersey, Dr. Nate Lebowitz, saying he is seeing the same phenomenon that you see in the animal labs in an 89-year-old man who was too fragile to operate on. He had a totally blocked coronary artery and no damage to that part of his heart. His heart was revascularized, meaning the circulation was eventually reestablished on its own. He was taking the Longevinex pill.

Q: So is there any conclusive evidence showing the long-term effects of resveratrol on humans?

A: The best evidence we have is still in the animal lab. We can’t do what we did in the animal lab because they take out the animal’s heart-it’s called an excised animal heart-and keep it beating and subject it to a heart attack. Obviously, whatever you do is going to lead to the death of the animal. You can’t go take humans and, let’s say, give half of them a placebo tablet that’s inactive and half of them the active resveratrol pill and just see which half dies.

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