In your quest to stay younger looking, you may have spent a lot of time and money on anti-aging products that didn’t deliver much.  But there’s one simple plant extract that you’ve likely overlooked.  And, unlike all those other expensive synthetic products, this natural nutrient is research proven to slow down cellular aging.

This Powerful Plant Extract Age-Proofs Your Skin

If you eat peanuts, blueberries, or drink grape juice, cocoa, or red wine on a regular basis, you’ve been helping to age-proof your skin without knowing it.  How? All these foods contain one of nature’s best anti-aging nutrients, resveratrol.

Nearly 2 decades ago, resveratrol was found in research to extend the lifespan of lab animals.  It was also determined to be the reason why the French have such low levels of heart disease despite eating a fairly high animal fat diet.  The reason is they drink a lot of red wine that’s full of resveratrol.

Resveratrol goes to work on the cellular level. It re-activates an enzyme, sirtuin-1, that can shut down as you get older.  Turning on your sirtuin enzymes again allows your body to repair its damaged RNA (ribonucleic acid).  Doing so preserves your telomeres, the tiny caps at each end of your individual genetic material.  The longer that telomeres stay intact, the younger you stay.

Resveratrol not only fights aging from the inside out, it also fights it from the outside in, from the surface of your skin.  Many over the counter anti-aging creams contain idebenone, a synthetic, pharmaceutical antioxidant that has shown some success in fighting skin aging.  Yet, studies have shown resveratrol to naturally have a 17-fold greater antioxidant capacity than idebenone.

It also has a greater antioxidant capacity of Vitamins C and E, which are very powerful antioxidant, anti-aging nutrients in their own right.

So, why would you want to pay high prices for a synthetic antioxidant that works only minimally?

Simple resveratrol-containing skin products that don’t cost an arm and a leg can be bought from natural foods/supplement stores, or online.  They contain good amounts of natural resveratrol that, when applied to your skin, performs the following anti-aging tasks:

• Boosts collagen production that keeps skin firm
• Helps skin repair RNA damage that leads to wrinkles, fine lines, sagging
• Provides a strong anti-oxidant to fight damage from sun, wind, and environmental toxins that skin is constantly exposed to
• Adds a natural phytoestrogen to skin to fight hormonal aging
• Helps lock moisture in the skin

Resveratrol is also being looked at for its skin cancer fighting properties as well.  A recent study published in the Archives of Biochemical Biophysics cited resveratrol as showing great promise in combating not only skin aging but skin cancer.

Skin is the largest organ of your body.  Its cells are under constant attack from environmental stressors.  So, it stands to reason that a strong antioxidant, like resveratrol, applied topically can also protect your entire body from disease.  It forms a protective barrier on the surface of your skin to block toxins from entering your body.

As noted above, resveratrol is present in varying degrees in many plant foods, red wine and grape juice.  Try to include as many of these in your diet on a daily basis as possible.  Yet, you’d have to eat an awful lot of them to get the concentration of resveratrol contained in a supplemental dose.  But you don’t want to over-supplement either, thinking more must be better.

Nutritionists and naturopath physicians generally agree that between 100-200 mg of resveratrol a day is a good dose to take by mouth.  Some research points to the fact that 300 mg of resveratrol blocks a protein enzyme in your liver, yet the significance of that is not clearly known.

Applied topically to your skin, find a product that contains at least 1% resveratrol.  A few companies where you can find high quality resveratrol containing skin products include Skin Actives and Healthy Choice Naturals.

Summary: 

As you get older, you’ll want to have the advantage over an aging face and body.   Resveratrol can help you achieve that.  It will help your skin stay younger looking longer as well as help the rest of you fight aging in general.  You can achieve these goals by doing the following:

• Assuring that your diet is rich in resveratrol-containing foods.
• Supplement with at least 100 mg of resveratrol or trans-resveratrol a day.
• Use a resveratrol containing cream to protect your skin.

Stay Well,
Jay Brachfeld, M.D.

Resveratrol for Skin Disorders, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060966/

Topical Resveratrol Combats Skin Aging, http://www.lef.org/magazine/2011/11/Topical-Resveratrol-Combats-Skin-Aging/Page-01

Resveratrol, a Phytoestrogen Found in Red Wine, Down Regulates Protein S Expression, http://www.thrombosisresearch.com/article/S0049-3848%2810%2900483-4/abstract