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Showing posts from December, 2014

A glass of red wine is worth an hour of exercise. Red wine compound resveratrol may negate health benefits of exercise. Or both. Or neither.

Once again we have dueling headlines about the effects of red wine and resveratrol: Does it enhance the effects of exercise or negate them? A study from the University of Alberta in Canada found that resveratrol supplementation in animals improved muscle and heart functions in the same way as an hour of exercise would, leading the study’s lead author Jason Dyck to postulate that “We could conceivably create an improved exercise performance in a pill." Supplement marketers already label resveratrol as an “exercise mimic,” while bloggers and wine lovers conclude that a glass of red wine would therefore do the same. Meanwhile, at Queen’s University a few provinces over in Ontario, researchers were finding that resveratrol supplementation blunted the benefits of high-intensity interval exercise, a seemingly opposite effect. In a four-week placebo-controlled clinical trial , the data “clearly demonstrates that RSV supplementation doesn't augment training, but may impair the aff