Resveratrol May Benefit Digestive Health

 By Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS, May 13, 2010, abstracted from “Dietary supplementation of resveratrol attenuates chronic colonic inflammation in mice” in the May 2010 issue of the European Journal of Pharmacology

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), which affects more than one million Americans, is an inflammatory condition of the intestines that has no known cause but is thought to involve an immune reaction of the body to its own intestinal tract.

The two major types of IBD are ulcerative colitis (UC), which is limited to the colon, and Crohn’s Disease (CD), which can involve any part of the digestive system (1).  Current treatments for IBD aim at decreasing inflammation through prescription medications (2, 3).  But prescription drug treatments come with numerous side effects that include acne, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, psychological disturbances, cataracts, growth failure in children, and bone cell death (4), making them very undesirable.

Fortunately, safer ways to help inflammatory digestive health have surfaced such as limiting sugar and fat intake (6), increasing dietary fiber (6), probiotics (7) as well as fish oil and quercetin (8).  Now a new study in mice (9) has found that a combination of supplements may help protect against IBD.

In the study, fifty 6-week-old mice were both fed standard diets and given either resveratrol (equivalent to 30 mg resveratrol per day in a 70 kg person) or placebo for 30 days. After 30 days, both groups were then given an inflammatory injection each day for 5 days to simulate developing acute colitis that progressed to severe chronic inflammation after 21 days.

The researchers found that the resveratrol group had “significantly” better symptoms associated with colitis regarding diarrhea and rectal bleeding as well as “dramatically reduced histological signs of cell damage.”  

While 40% of the mice in the control group died before the end of the study from the colitis, all of the mice in the resveratrol group survived.  

Finally, 3 weeks after the injections were stopped, the resveratrol mice had significantly lower levels of inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-alpha (32% lower: 3.75 vs 5.5 picograms per mg of tissue) and IL-1 beta (25% lower: 9 vs 12 picograms/mg tissue) and higher levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 (24% higher: 1.25 vs 0.95 picograms/mg tissue).

For the researches, “We conclude that resveratrol…represents a novel approach to the treatment of chronic intestinal inflammation.”

Greg Arnold is a Chiropractic Physician practicing in Danville, CA.  You c