Wine could be as good as a gym session

The question of whether to make a trip to the gym or relax with a glass of wine is one that’s familiar to most and now research from a Canadian university may make that particular decision easier for us all.

Jason Dyck and his team have found that a compound in red wine may help improve performance.

Missing the gym in order to enjoy a glass of wine or because of too many the night before may not be a problem as long as it’s red wine.

Researchers have found that resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, may enhance your performance by improving heart function and muscle strength and therefore be doing all the hard work for you.

A natural compound found in some fruits, nuts and red wine, resveratrol may enhance exercise training and performance according to recently published medical research from the University of Alberta.

Principal investigator Jason Dyck, a researcher at the university’s faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, and his team were surprised by their findings: “We were excited when we saw that resveratrol showed results similar to what you would see from extensive endurance exercise training.”

“We immediately saw the potential for this and thought that we had identified improved exercise performance in a pill,” said Dyck.

Dyck and his team will now start testing resveratrol on diabetics with heart failure to determine if the natural compound can help improve heart function for this patient group.

The 10-week diabetes study is expected to start this year and the benefits may not stop there according to Dyck: “I think resveratrol could help patient populations who want to exercise but are physically incapable.“

“Resveratrol could mimic exercise for them or improve the benefits of the modest amount of exercise that they can do,” said Dyck.

There may be an easier way.

“It is very satisfying to progress from basic research in a lab to testing in people, in a short period of time.”