Resveratrol – A Useful Health Aid Or Just Hype?

It is an incontestable fact that there has been a lot of hype around resveratrol in recent days. Go to any health forum, where health supplements are being discussed, and you are sure to come across quite a good number of threads on resveratrol. And unlike other health supplements, whose acceptance tends to be limited only to ‘alternative health’ circles, resveratrol seems to have found favorable attention even from the ‘mainstream’ medical community. As such, even in the mainstream medical community there is a discussion going on about resveratrol.

As it turns out, resveratrol itself is really a natural chemical (as natural as anything one can think of). It is formed when certain types of plants are subjected to pathogenic attacks, by certain types of bacteria and fungi. What is special about resveratrol, however, is that it has been observed to have a number of benefits on animals on whom it was administered. This has offered a strong hint that it could have the same effects on humans, seeing that the animals on whom it was seen to have those benefits were animals that are very close (in terms of bodily make up), to us humans.

The benefits we are looking at here, by the way, are not petty. We are looking at things like anti-aging effects (as manifest in bodily function and appearance), cure to conditions like diabetes, cancer and certain types of heart problems, help with weight loss, and even the possibility of life extension. In other words, the very health problems that the human race is has always grappled with, mostly without success.

In the face of resveratrol offering promise to help with all these problems, it was inevitable that a lot of hullabaloo would develop around it. Hence the reason why it is the talk of all forums where health issues are discussed.

Yet not everyone has been so enthusiastic about resveratrol.

A certain group of health scientists have come out openly, stating that resveratrol is really just ‘hype’ and that it has nothing to offer the people who use it. This school of thought is keen to point out that the benefits that resveratrol is said to have have only been observed in animal studies. As such there have been no ‘human studies’ and it is impossible to ascertain whether resveratrol has the same effects on humans. The commentators in question therefore point out that most of the celebration we have made about resveratrol has been premature: because its effect on human is still unverified.

So, if resveratrol is a useful health aid or ‘just hype,’ is the question.

As it turns out, looking at experiences of previous users and going with the strength of the animal studies conducted using it, there is a strong possibility of resveratrol really being a useful health aid. People who have used it before have reported satisfactory results in terms of its short term promises like weight loss and skin rejuvenation. This means that at least as far as those effects go, resveratrol is a useful health aid. And in terms of things like life extension and anti aging effects (where we have not had enough time to study its effects on humans), we can assume in the interim, that in as much as it has those effects on lab animals, it is likely to have them on humans.

Ultimately, then, we really cannot dismiss resveratrol as ‘just hype.’