Ever heard the rumor that red wine can actually help you to lose weight? Well, apparently this is no rumor! Researchers have slowly been developing and testing a new drug which is based off the inquiry into the effects of resveratrol, an ingredient found in red wine.This drug is being designed to trick the body by making it believe that it has a limited amount of food.
This would activate the body’s mechanism to gain nutrients from fat stores around the body – i.e. burning fat. Resveratrol, a chemical found in grape skin, has been linked to the prevention of heart disease however this new drug is much concentrated and therefore can be taken less often in smaller amounts with the same results. Also, the negative effects from drinking an amount of red wine as to gain the benefits of resvertrol would most definitely outweigh the positive effects.
You might be a few kilos lighter, but you’d end up having to borrow someone else’s liver! Supplements of revertrol have also been developed however they haven’t proven to be very effective – not like this new super drug.
French scientists have recently been testing their new drug on mice and claim that it has the benefits of resvertrol but none of the negative side-effects. The mice who were administered the drug could not gain any weight whatsoever. Also, despite the fact that the mice were given a high fat diet the drug made them immune to obesity and insulin resistance. It is vital that the study showed that the drug gave the effects of a very low calorie diet because, this has been strongly linked to a higher mortality rate. Their athletic ability even increased!
When testing their endurance levels – scientists found that this had improved dramatically. At the same time however, the mice seemed to exercise less on their own – probably as a means to save energy. However, like all scientific studies, nothing is perfect yet. There needs to be more long-term study on the effects the drugs will have on the mice as there is risk for overheating and speeding up metabolism to the point where it will decrease life expectancy. So the rodents still have a lot of work ahead of them …but hopefully soon they’ll start moving some humans into the lab!