Anti Aging Supplements: Grape Seed Extract

If you are interested in anti aging supplements, take a close look at grape seed extract. It has some startling properties that will make you wonder if mom was right to tell you not to eat those grape seeds!

Grape seeds are very high in antioxidants which, as you probably know, have been shown to have many healing and anti aging effects. However, the polyphenols that they contain have properties that seem to go beyond regular antioxidants in many ways.

First is resveratrol. This a constituent of grapes that has been highly publicized in recent years after research identified it as the ingredient that accounts for the apparent health giving effect of drinking small quantities of red wine.

A huge industry in resveratrol supplements was born, practically overnight. However, scientific research has not proved any benefits to taking resveratrol in isolation. It seems we need the total effect of the grape.

When it comes to grape seed extract, the position is much more positive. This contains resveratrol but also many other nutrients.

Research has shown that grape seed extract can be used to treat heart disease and hypertension in animals. There have also been successful case studies on humans reported in the medical journals, although no major population study as yet. Grape seed extract appears to stop the accumulation of cholesterol and reduce inflammation.

It has also been reported to help prevent cancer. It is thought to promote apoptosis, which is the natural dying off of old cells so that they can be replaced. In cancer, tumors grow because damaged or dangerous cells keep multiplying without dying off. Grape seed extract may therefore help to reduce or prevent tumors.

It is also this aspect of resveratrol and grape seed extract that leads to its promotion among the anti aging supplements. By encouraging apoptosis, it allows rejuvenation at the cellular level. When old, damaged cells hang around longer than they should, we end up looking and feeling older.

Resveratrol is one of the most popular anti aging supplements. However, rather than taking it in isolation, you might want to take it along with the other antioxidants, flavonoids and vitamins that it occurs with naturally. Often, substances that are found together in nature have a synergistic effect. That means that the different ingredients work together so that their combined effect is much greater than the effect of each one separately.

Perhaps it sounds like the answer is to eat a lot of grape seeds. The problem is that in order to digest them and get the elements out of them, they have to be thoroughly chewed. They do not taste good and they are hard for the stomach to digest.

So it is usually preferable to buy grape seed extract than to chew on grape seeds. You can get it as powder, in capsules or tablets, or you can buy grape seed oil which is also extracted from the seeds.

Grape seed extract should include all of the elements naturally occurring in health-giving grape seeds in nature, but in a much higher concentration. Therefore, grape seed extract is a better solution if you are looking for anti aging supplements.