Polyphenols such as resveratrol – estrogenic

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I was asked a question last night from the Alpha Lions Club members.

What do I think about polyphenols?

Good question.

First, polyphenols are an antioxidant chemical in plants that are believed to help fight disease in people.

One of the most popular polyphenols is resveratrol.

Resveratrol was supposed to lengthen our lives and make us healthy.

However, as this study shows, that it was never a good idea to take resveratrol.

And it’ll show you why I’m not really a fan of polyphenols as supplements.

The problem with polyphenols is this.

There are plenty of polyphenol food sources.

Polyphenols are found in chocolate, grapes, really all fruits and vegetables.

It’s okay to take fruit and eat it, or chocolate.

Or tea. Or coffee. Those can be good things.

Grapes and wine are best sources of resveratrol.

But concentrating polyphenols into a pill or capsule is not usually a good idea.

Why?

Because so many polyphenols are highly estrogenic.

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For example, resveratrol is highly estrogenic.

Let me just explain one word that may be puzzling.

That word is “agonist.”

What it means is that resveratrol acts like estrogen.

And it combines inside cells as if it is estrogen.

And that’s definitely not a good thing.

Estrogen is a necessary hormone — it’s found in both men and women.

But you want to minimize your estrogen.

Estrogen levels go up when you’re stressed.

That doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily stressed because your boss is putting pressure on you, although that may happen.

Stress can include being injured, having inflammation from your gut, or being sunburned.

Stress can be working in the dark or under bright fluorescent lights or not getting enough sleep.

You get the idea.

These are all stressful, and they raise estrogen.

You don’t want to pile more estrogen on in the form of a polyphenol such as resveratrol.

Indeed, after billions of dollars are spent promoting its benefits and trying to come up with ways of selling it for high prices, a good study comes out showing that resveratrol is at best worthless as a supplement.

This is an interesting study because they measured the amount of resveratrol that was metabolized in the urine.

This is a pretty good indicator of how much resveratrol someone is getting from all sources.

It accounts for any combination of supplemental resveratrol with resveratrol from grapes, red wine, and so forth.

So it’s a good study, and it has clear findings.

Resveratrol consumption is not predictive of longevity in older adults and,

not significantly associated with markers of inflammation, cardiovascular disease, or cancer.

Resveratrol levels achieved with the diet do not show any apparent protective association with disease and markers of disease in humans and are not associated with lifespan.

So basically, resveratrol did NOTHING to help improve health or increase lifespan.

I think that if the poor people in the study had taken a lot of supplemental resveratrol (they hadn’t), they would’ve seen a large, detrimental drop in their health.

Many would have had heart attacks, dementia, and strokes.

And it would have been from all that estrogenic resveratrol.

Eating healthy foods is good.

But this study shows one reason why you want to avoid fads such as supplementing with polyphenols.


Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.
Resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound found in grapes and wine, is an agonist for the estrogen receptor
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/25/14138.full 

Resveratrol Levels and All-Cause Mortality in Older Community-Dwelling Adults 
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1868537&resultclick=1