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News of the disease-protective and longevity benefits of red wine has grabbed headlines around the world during the past few years. Red wine contains a number of beneficial polyphenols, such as the much-publicized resveratrol as well as quercetin, a compound that is now also making news of its own.

Long known for its anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects, recent scientific breakthroughs reveal that quercetin may help promote longevity by mimicking the effects of caloric restriction. Furthermore, this powerful antioxidant demonstrates protective effects against cardio-vascular disease.

While quercetin can be obtained through red wine and other dietary sources such as apples, onions, grapefruit, tea, green vegetables, and beans, highly purified supplements make it possible to acquire the bio-logically meaningful doses that have shown promise in tightly controlled studies.

In the words of the German nutrition expert Professor Stephan C. Bischoff, “Quercetin is a most promising compound for disease prevention and therapy.”

Let’s take a look at some of the compelling evidence that has accumulated over the past few years for quercetin’s role in health management and disease prevention.

Increased dietary intake of flavonoids particularly from quercetin-rich foods has been linked with decreased heart disease mortality and decreased stroke incidence. In 2000, Spanish scientists showed that red wine, laden with quercetin and related antioxidants, prevented activity of inflammation-promoting NF-kappaB in human volunteers, providing a big part of the explanation of how red wine reduces cardiovascular mortality.

In 2004, British researchers demonstrated that humans who took quercetin supplements had substantially reduced platelet aggregation, suggesting that another of quercetin’s cardiovascular health benefits was related to a reduced risk of clotting.

These researchers later showed that dietary ingestion of quercetin from onion soup also helped inhibit platelet aggregation. And in a study of 30 men who already had coronary heart disease, Greek cardiologists showed that a red grape polyphenol extract rich in quercetin caused an increase in flow-mediated dilation of major arteries, a potent indicator of improved endothelial health.

The natural next step was to study quercetin supplements alone and their effect on blood pressure, a study undertaken at the University of Utah in 2007. They studied 19 patients with pre-hypertension and 22 with stage 1 (early) hypertension, supplementing them with placebo or 730 mg quercetin/day for 28 days.

There was no effect on the pre-hypertensive patients, but the hypertensive group enjoyed reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (average 7 mmHg and 5 mmHg reductions, respectively)meaningful changes that lower vascular disease risk.

In 2008, a randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial in 12 healthy men showed biochemical evidence of improved endothelial function (such as augmentation of nitric oxide status) with as little as 200 mg/day of quercetin.

Together, these effects point to an important role for quercetin in protecting cardiovascular health.

Despite being the most common and best studied of the polyphenols, quercetin has been largely neglected in the public eye until recently, as new research has revealed its astonishing potential as a health-promoting, disease-preventing supplement.

Quercetin’s powerful antioxidant effects directly reduce tissue damage and have now been shown to prevent diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Health care practitioners recommend quercetin in doses ranging from 50 mg to 500 mg, one to three times daily.

Quercetin, a ubiquitous polyphenol found especially in apples, onions, and red grapes has been ignored for years while other members of its class took the limelight. In just the past two years, however, a virtual explosion of information has emerged about this versatile molecule.

We now understand that it can fundamentally affect disease processes as different as obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and asthma, through its powerful antioxidant effects that reduce inflammation throughout the body.

Even more astonishingly, it is now clear that quercetin may have a direct and independent effect on prolonging life itself, through mechanisms that are becoming less mysterious as scientists focus their attention deep inside cellular processes.

Article Source: Ezine Article
URL: Enhanced Antioxidant Protection Against Heart Disease

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