Pinot Noir: The Elixir of Life
I have the enviable opportunity to try to prevent heart disease from ever harming or killing my patients. In doing so I carry the customary weapons of defense: medications, dietary strategies, exercise perscriptions, omega-3 fatty acid suggestions, and stress reduction admonitions. Undoubtedly, my most widely embraced recommendation is the advice to lightly to moderately drink red wine. While many studies have shown the benefits of this advice, I take it a step further and recommend that my patients drink not just any red, but, specifically, Pinot Noir.
I do love Pinot Noir (as well as many other varietals), but the suggestion to drink it before other reds for health purposes is based on some very compelling data surrounding a substance that is in fact found in all red wines, but is at its highest levels in Pinot Noir. I am speaking of Resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound found almost exclusively in red wine.
Resveratrol is produced by grapes when they are stressed, most notably by fungi that typically attack in cool damp climates. Research has demonstrated that of all grapes, Pinot Noir possesses the highest and most consistently elevated levels of Resveratrol. To me this means more than you might think, as the research I analyze suggests not only potentially beneficial effects of diminishing heart disease, Alzheimer's, and cancer, but in actually prolonging life. In fact, Resveratrol is the only substance that has been found to indeed prolong life in not only yeast, worms, and fruit flies (the invertebrates), but also in some vertebrates - fish and over-fed mice.
Of Course, this does not mean that if you religiously drink Pinot Noir you will live forever, impenetrably shielded from the risk of heart attacks, cancer, and dementia. What it does mean, however, is that by choosing this wine as one of your "staples" you are consuming more Resveratrol, a compound that is under immense scientific scrutiny in order to uncover its unique power as a potentially life-enhancing natural substance.
By Seth Baum, M.D., FACC, FAHA
Seth Baum, of Boca Raton, Florida, is the founder and director of Clinical Development, VitalRemedyMD, and founder of the Foundation of Preventive and Interative Medicine. He is preventive cardiologist, and one of only about 300 board certified clinical lipidologist, a branch of medicine wherin physicans receive speacial training in cholesterol abnormalities and therapies.