Longevity interests a lot of people who are not quite ready to give up their lives, just yet, and who look to intelligent alternatives to culturally defined eating patterns and “health care.”

The upsides of drinking wine have been touted for a while and are thought, by by quite a few people, to be the understanding why the French can get away with eating a high fat diet while enjoying a low rate of heart disease.

A French research team, a few years ago, also discovered that men who regularly consumed at least two glasses of wine day-to-day were 50 percent less expected than non-drinkers to suffer a second heart attack.

Previous studies with yeast, a miniscule species of worm, and fruit flies have proven that resveratrol — a polyphenol antioxidant found in grapes, in particular red grapes, and particularly pinot noir grapes which are grown in northern latitudes and used in wines coming from New York, Washington, and Oregon — is a life-extending compound.

In a recent study from Italy, resveratrol has been used to increase the life span of a short-lived breed of tropical fish by more than 50%. Not only did fish given resveratrol in their food live longer than the control group, they stayed livelier as they aged and displayed better memory in stimulus/response tests. And the neurons in their brains didn’t decay as quickly when they died and were dissected.

Resveratrol, an organic compound contained in the skins of grapes that protects them from disease, is extracted from grapes by the process in making wine. The wine becomes a preservative for the resveratrol and prevents its oxidation.

This is the reason why drinking grape juice or eating raisins doesn’t have the exactfinal result; the resveratrol has neither been preserved or extracted. There is also proof that resveratrol in food supplements oxidizes upon when exposed to air and loses its potency.

Red wine may truly be a “wondrous drug!”

Different studies have shown that wine, especially red wine, can help prevent colds, raisethe levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, lower the risk of Alzheimer’s, lower the number and size of fat cells in the body, lower the risk of prostate cancer, and has anti-inflammatory properties to boot.

Drug companies are trying to copy Red Wine that it may truly be a “wondrous drug!”, but might not be able to preserve it’s health-preserving benefits. In any case, resveratrol is freely available in red wine and not patentable as such.

In Summation Red wine may actually be a “wondrous drug!”  Not only has the resveratrol wine contains so far been proven to lengthen the life of yeast, worms, flies, and fish, other studies have shown that wine, and in particular red wine, can help prevent colds, increase the levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, lower the risk of Alzheimer’s, lower the size and number of fat cells in the body, reduce the risk of prostate cancer, and has anti-inflammatory properties to boot.