Red wine prevents memory loss

The benefits of red wine seem to never cease. Now, a new study carried out by the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine (USA) and published in the journal Nature , concludes that resveratrol , the natural antioxidant found in foods such as red grapes and, therefore, in red wine, it helps prevent memory impairment associated with age .

The researchers conducted an experiment with older mice whose “results were surprising,” says study leader Ashok K. Shetty. And it is that distributing a treatment based on resveratrol to rodents over a period of two years and a placebo to the control group, they discovered that those who had taken resveratrol had considerably improved their spatial learning and memory . In the placebo mice, the learning ability was maintained but the ability to create new spatial memories was significantly reduced over the duration of the study.

Furthermore, neurogenesis was doubled in the mice that received resveratrol compared to the others; they also had better blood flow to the brain and a lower level of inflammation in the hippocampus area.

Scientists believe that apart from its health benefits, resveratrol also has a positive effect on the hippocampus, the area of the brain that is crucial for functions such as memory, learning, or mood. “The study provides new evidence that resveratrol treatment in later life can help improve memory and mood function in later life ,” Shetty clarifies.

Taking into account that both humans and animals show a decrease in cognitive capacity from middle age, these findings may have important implications in the treatment of memory loss in the elderly and even for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.