Thursday, November 02, 2006

Life in France; Death in Finland

Resveratrol, since you ask, is the chemical in red wine which is thought to explain the French Paradox. The French eat far too much red meat and yet have relatively low rates of heart disease, making this not so much a Paradox as an Irritation. Resveratrol, it was decided, was the answer as it appears to protect the heart. Now, it seems, it offsets the effects of over-eating. It also makes one fatally attractive, though this may be something to do with the half bottle of rouge one has just consumed in one gulp in an attempt to dislodge arterial plaques without actually having to exercise, stop eating or, indeed, stand up. This, for the life extensionists I met while writing my book about the pursuit of immortality, was a problem as they were as convinced that drinking was a Bad Thing as they were that resveratrol was a Good Thing. Naturally, therefore, they sucked all the fun out of it by making resveratrol tablets. So the rest of us can drink red wine in the happy conviction that it is doing us good then? No. You have to drink a lot to get enough resveratrol fully to benefit and drinking a lot does indeed kill you as the Finns have discovered. Alcohol kills more Finnish males than anything else. As ever, science leaves us more or less back where we started - uncertain, alone and, as a result, drunk.

13 comments:

  1. And, today, Technology Review offers a fuller account of the wonders of resveratrol.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17704&ch=biotech

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  2. Is is not the case that death is the leading cause of alcohol consumption, rather than the other way round? The farther north you go in Europe the more gloomy, dark and dreary the weather gets, the more one is inclined to think morbid thoughts and consequently the more one needs to drink to get through the day. Just a thought.

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  3. By my calculations, to get as much of this wonder susbstance as those lucky 'middle-aged mice', you'd need to knock back something over 330 glasses of red a day. A bit of a challenge, even for the French - Aux verres, citoyens!

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  4. Neil,
    You are so right, death causes alcohol worthy of Wilde's drink is the curse of the drinking classes.
    Anon,
    You need large quantities for the anti-obesity effect. I think the anti-heart attack kicks in at about two glasses of wine a week. Not exactly pushing the party boat out.

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  5. In a similar vein (if you'll excuse the pun), I note that dark chocolate can enhance the function of one's blood vessels:

    http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000DF2BE-66D1-10B7-A6D183414B7FFE9F&sc=I100322

    Apparently, dark chocolate causes blood vessels to dilate. Coffee, on the other hand, causes blood vessels to contract, and therefore raises blood pressure. I recall that this precipitated the following piece of medical advice: take a chunk of dark chocolate approximately 10 minutes before a cup of coffee, and the two effects will cancel out!

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  6. We just had an article in our paper about this today, too. Apparently, one would have to drink several bottles of red a day to get the beneficial effects the obese mice experienced. I do remember a weird old wives' tale I heard when I was a kid, though: One of my relatives pointed out that winos always had great heads of hair and it was thanks to the booze. Anyone ever heard that?

    By the way, don't the Finns pickle themselves with something other than red wine? As in, Vodka?

    I would be happy if I could have one glass of Romanee-Conti every evening for the rest of my life. I don't know if it would make me live longer, but it sure would enhance my quality of life!

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  7. Neil Forsyth is quite right when he says the farther north you go in Europe the gloomier it gets and so makes you drink more. The last time I was in Newcastle I ended up completely smashed by tea-time.

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  8. As it happens, I am currently in Denmark and stone cold sober.

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  9. Lucky you. I wish I were currently in Denmark -- well, in Copenhagen anyway. Instead I'm currently in my study trying to hammer out a bibliography of all the books by and about Jim Crace.

    By the way, Bookmeister Appleyard, what do you think of Mr. Crace? I think he is your most inventive English novelist writing today. On a totally different path than Mssrs. McEwan, Amis, and Barnes. In terms of prose style and narrative originality, I would even go so far as to say he's more gifted than all of those other book boys.

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  10. He may well be, Susan, but, alas, I have not read him. This Bookmeister has most of his reading programmed by work, so keeping up with contemporary fiction is not my strong point.

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  11. If I may be so bold, Susan, to recommend to Bryan that if he does get a chance to read any Crace, that he start with 'Being Dead'. It was one of the most compelling novels I've read in the past few years. It was wonderfully macabre, superbly written and it certainly left its mark on me.

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  12. Neil, I agree with you completely: That's Crace's best novel and has an *amazing* narrative structure. I don't think I've ever seen another novelist do with time what he does in _Being Dead_.

    And you don't have to take my word for it, Bryan, because it won all kinds of awards -- Whitbread, Nat'l Book Critics' Circle Award, etc.

    Myself, I'm really looking forward to his next novel, due out in Feb. '07: _The Pesthouse_. Set in America in a medieval future -- post-technology. I think he'll have a blast with that concept.

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  13. I was in Finland and it seems like a really alive place ,and fun place. I enjoyed my staying there and i will go again. For people who are going for the first time here is a grate link with Hotels .. for me it was hard to find one: http://www.cylex.fi/hae/hotel.html
    Bye

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