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Pseudoscience: Rampant in Modern Medicine

Much of today’s medical information is distorted by business interests. With billions of dollars at stake, anything can be distorted and information is often suppressed about cheap, effective solutions, in favor of expensive medications with marginal benefit. Resveratrol issues are only the tip of a very large iceberg.

How Modern Medicine Obfuscates Resveratrol Science

Marketing a resveratrol-based dietary supplement has given me a front-row seat to view how modern medicine obfuscates science and throws in other roadblocks to indefinitely delay public acceptance of a truly miraculous natural molecule.

Examination of events and published studies involving the red wine molecule resveratrol (rez-vair-a-trol) over the past decade reveals nine ways modern medicine has attempted to muddy the science and delay public adoption of this natural molecule as an affordable dietary supplement.
This investigation reveals that researchers (a) intentionally employ overdoses of resveratrol in laboratory studies to produce negative or null results; (b) absurdly claim resveratrol is not biologically available when systemic results have been widely reported in animals and humans; (c) rigidly assert a single-gene target (Sirtuin1) is responsible for most of the health benefits produced by resveratrol when aging and chronic disease involves many genes; (d) doggedly pursue development of synthetic resveratrol-like molecules (analogs) in a futile attempt to produce a blockbuster drug; (e) ignore evidence that resveratrol works better at lower doses (hormesis); (f) continue to ignore an available resveratrol dietary supplement that has been demonstrated to produce health benefits in the animal lab and humans greater than a resveratrol-based drug that sold to a major drug company for $720 million; (g) launch false allegations against resveratrol researchers who conduct studies involving branded resveratrol dietary supplements; (h) produce faulty science with flawed conclusions; and finally (i) simply fail to prescribe or recommend resveratrol to needy patients.
Some of the efforts to obfuscate the science surrounding resveratrol are almost laughable as one study found efforts to alter its molecular structure in order to produce a patentable blockbuster resveratrol-like drug were futile. After molecular side chains are added to resveratrol they are efficiency removed during liver metabolization and return to native resveratrol.
Another absurdity is the false assertion resveratrol is not biologically available due to its attachment to detoxification molecules as it passes through the human liver while animal and human studies document profound systemic health benefits.
Hyperlinking permits presentation of published reports and events that can be checked by readers themselves.

Resveratrol: Life extension effects

When an item makes the New York Times, it becomes part of the historical record. In biological sciences, the journal Nature serves a similar purpose. The definitive article on resveratrol’s life extending effects appeared in Nature this month.

Resveratrol improves health and survival of mice on a high-calorie diet
Nature 444, 337-342 (16 November 2006) doi:10.1038/nature05354; Received 10 August 2006; Accepted 19 October 2006; Published online 1 November 2006
Joseph A. Baur, Kevin J. Pearson, Nathan L. Price, Hamish A. Jamieson, Carles Lerin, Avash Kalra, Vinayakumar V. Prabhu, Joanne S. Allard, Guillermo Lopez-Lluch, Kaitlyn Lewis, Paul J. Pistell, Suresh Poosala, Kevin G. Becker, Olivier Boss, Dana Gwinn, Mingyi Wang, Sharan Ramaswamy, Kenneth W. Fishbein, Richard G. Spencer, Edward G. Lakatta, David Le Couteur, Reuben J. Shaw, Placido Navas, Pere Puigserver, Donald K. Ingram, Rafael de Cabo and David A. Sinclair

Abstract

Resveratrol (3,5,4′-trihydroxystilbene) extends the lifespan of diverse species including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster. In these organisms, lifespan extension is dependent on Sir2, a conserved deacetylase proposed to underlie the beneficial effects of caloric restriction. Here we show that resveratrol shifts the physiology of middle-aged mice on a high-calorie diet towards that of mice on a standard diet and significantly increases their survival. Resveratrol produces changes associated with longer lifespan, including increased insulin sensitivity, reduced insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-I) levels, increased AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator 1alpha (PGC-1alpha) activity, increased mitochondrial number, and improved motor function. Parametric analysis of gene set enrichment revealed that resveratrol opposed the effects of the high-calorie diet in 144 out of 153 significantly altered pathways. These data show that improving general health in mammals using small molecules is an attainable goal, and point to new approaches for treating obesity-related disorders and diseases of ageing.