Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment. This is a transcript of a Dr. Jay Show discussing telomeres, wine, and resveratrol in anti-aging studies, broadcast on AM 1560TheGame from Houston, TX. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients from Katy, Fort Bend County, Metro Houston and Southeast Texas from offices in Sugar Land, TX.
Here’s the transcript of the third portion of the Show discussing wine and Resveratrol as contributing to anti-aging and wellness.
We’re happy now to welcome Dr. Theodore S. Piliszek to the Show. Dr. Piliszek is a graduate of King’s College School of Medicine of the University of London and his practice is at Willowbrook Medical Center in Houston. We’re going to talk about anti-aging and wellness. Dr. Piliszek, welcome to the Show.
PILISZEK – Thank you very much, Jay, I’m glad to be back.
BENNETT – I appreciate you coming over as always. First of all, I want to go into the aspects of the media and the hype concerning supplements. One question I had for you is that about a month or two back, there was a big news story about being able to do a blood test to be able to determine basically your personal expiration date. And that was the Telomere study, which looks at DNA and determines how long you have to live. I think there’s a little misconception on that. That’s not necessarily the time you’re going to fall over and die but that’s more an indicator of aging, is that right?
PILISZEK – Absolutely. But it’s interesting that you brought up this point about the Telomeres. Telomeres are the few little ends of our chromosomes, almost think of it as the plastic attachments on the ends of our sneaker laces. Every time our cells change, or when they multiply, the Telomere length at the end of each chromosome shortens. A scientific group out of California did all this work about ten, fifteen years ago and just got the Nobel Prize in determining the important of the Telomeres and the shortening because once the cells attain a certain Telomere length of their chromosomes, that can help us determine expiration and death. We are not quite sure how that shortening takes place or what all the causes are, but we do know for instance that exercise stops their shortening or lessens it. Certain nutritional habits – like caloric restriction – also do the same. There was a thought that maybe Resveratrol, the anti-fungal products in our system, can do it, but there’s some question about that now. So therefore that is all very, very important stuff but we have to keep up with the news that we get on a regular basis and then we need to, as always, take everything with a pinch of salt.
BENNETT – That’s incredibly interesting and you bring up Resveratrol, which you see all over the place now in regards to supplementation and in the grocery stores and I’ve got a lot of friends who think that drinking a lot of Pinot Noir is the fountain of youth. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Resveratrol?
PILISZEK – Resveratrol is of the so-called distilled bean family and is one of the well-known products made from plant sources, but it’s incorporated into our biochemistry and metabolism. It is one of the Proanthocyanidins, which we feel are of an antioxidant status. The question is, how much do we need and, so far, most of the work has been done on rodents and some on primates. But work done on humans is still very sketchy. As a result, I am not 100 percent behind taking too much of that particular product. We do know that certain populations around the world that do have longevity on their side do partake of certain wines or grape-related products, such as Pinot Noir. The concept behind that is that the Pinot Noir grape skin is very thin and very sensitive so in the late harvest period what happens is it gets attacked by fungus and as a protection against this fungus – which will attack most grapes when they start to dry out; of course the grapes will become sweeter as a result of that – the grapes manufacture an antidote which is Resveratrol. So they have quite a bit of Resveratrol. And Pinot Noir was thought to be the grape of that particular kind and that was the best one. And what happened is those people who did drink a bit of that wine seemed to have some sort of longevity on their side. Having done some further investigation on it, I’ve found another grape which is called the Cannonau grape from Sardinia. It is also associated with longevity but mainly in the male population as opposed to the female population which is rather interesting. But some new work is being done on that as we speak.
BENNETT – Which type of wine is that particular grape being used in? Sardinian wine?
PILISZEK – It is but it has to come from the Cannonau grape.
BENNETT – So do you drink a glass of red wine a night?
PILISZEK – I certainly do and I’ve now turned to Cannonau. One other factor or interesting fact about the Cannonau grape is that they think this grape goes back 3,000 years. It may in fact be one of the oldest varietals of grapes known to mankind.
BENNETT – If you’re going to buy the wine with the Cannonau grape, what exactly should you look for?
PILISZEK – It will probably have on the bottle: Cannonau di Sardenia, which is the Italian spelling of Sardinia.
Here’s a link to the next portion of the show.
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