Study shows Grape consumption's effects on health and lifespan

 

The long-term addition of grapes to the diet of mice results in distinctive gene expression patterns, lowers fatty liver, and lengthens the longevity of animals consuming a high-fat western style diet, according to extensive research that were recently published in the journal Foods. Dr. John Pezzuto of Western New England University served as the team's leader.

Pezzuto, who has published over 600 papers in the scholarly literature, expressed his extreme amazement at these findings. "We've all heard the adage "you are what you eat,' which is plainly accurate as eating is how we all develop from fetuses to adults. However, these research give that proverb a completely new meaning. In addition to being transformed to our bodily components, food also alters the expression of our genes, as demonstrated by our research with dietary grapes. That is genuinely amazing.

What impact does this change in gene expression have? This study demonstrates how fatty liver can be stopped or postponed. Around 25% of people worldwide have fatty livers, which might eventually result in harmful consequences including liver cancer. Grape consumption has a positive impact on the genes that affect how fatty liver develops. In supporting research, dietary grapes also impact metabolism in addition to gene expression. A group of researchers lead by Dr. Jeffrey Idle just published this study in the journal Food & Function.

This study also showed that grapes can increase the lifespan of mice fed a high-fat western-style diet, which is an amazing impact. It is well known that eating a high-fat western-style diet can lead to unhealthy conditions like obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. The addition of grapes to the diet, which had no impact on consumption frequency or body weight, postponed natural death. Pezzuto comments that while converting mouse lifespan to human lifespan is not a precise science, his best guess is that the change seen in the study would correlate to an additional 4-5 years in a human's lifespan.

It is unclear how any of this relates to people specifically, but it is evident that including grapes in the diet alters gene expression across the body rather than simply in the liver. Grape consumption affects gene expression in the brain, according to study by Pezzuto and his team that was just published in the journal Antioxidants. While a high-fat diet had a negative impact on behavior and cognition, grape drinking had positive effects that were prevented. This suggests that the altered gene expression was what caused this advantageous response. Although more research is required, it is noteworthy that a team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) led by Silverman found that grape consumption on a regular basis had a protective effect on brain metabolism. According to the latest studies, this is caused by altered gene expression.

References:

“Consumption of Grapes Modulates Gene Expression, Reduces Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, and Extends Longevity in Female C57BL/6J Mice Provided with a High-Fat Western-Pattern Diet” by Asim Dave, Eun-Jung Park, Avinash Kumar, Falguni Parande, Diren Beyoğlu, Jeffrey R. Idle and John M. Pezzuto, 5 July 2022, Foods.