What is The Correct Resveratrol Dosage for Human Beings?

In recent years, especially since 2006, resveratrol has become one of the hottest nutritional supplements on the market. It has been most popularly sold as an anti-aging treatment, a life extension treatment and as a preventative measure against cancer. The substance is also sold as an anti-inflammatory, a treatment for certain neurodegenerative diseases and as a treatment for people with high blood sugar. With so many potential positive results and no negative ones, many people have decided to start taking resveratrol, leading to the question: what is an appropriate Resveratrol dosage? The answer to this question is somewhat complicated due to lack of information.

The primary problem with most of the claims about resveratrol is that most claims are based on test results on non-human subjects. The exceptions to this are resveratrol’s effects in lower blood sugar and resveratrols ability to improve blood vessel function, both of which has been tested on people and shown to have a tangible effect. All the other claims are based exclusively on results stemming from tests on various animals and even some of these tests not been repeatable, rendering them scientifically meaningless. The claims about life extension come from experiments on yeast and worms. The claims about the effects on cancer stem from tests conducted on mice and other animals with very different physiologies. The same can be said for all of the other claims, except the one related to blood sugar already mentioned.

The simple fact of the matter is that to date there have been few studies conducted on humans, though there are a lot of them currently underway. This makes determining Resveratrol dosage somewhat tricky for those wanting to take Resveratrol supplements. In the United States alone there are currently twelve different clinical trials underway exploring the effects of resveratrol. However, of these twelve, only two – both of which are focused on the substance’s use as a treatment for Alzheimer’s – have reached “Phase 3” clinical trials, or widespread testing on human beings. It will be years before the results of the other clinical trials are made public. In the absence of testing on human beings, there are no authoritative dosage recommendations for human consumption.

The successful blood sugar experiment on people as well as a number of the more successful results on various animals were based on massive “mega doses” of resveratrol, and as a result many of the people taking the substance as a supplement have also been taking “mega doses”, usually defined as between 500 and 1000 milligrams per dose. To date there have been no reports of overdoses or adverse effects stemming from this practice, so at least on a short term basis these “mega doses” do not appear to be dangerous. Nevertheless, many consumers have expressed a wariness of taking so much of any supplement, resulting in a number of efforts to reduce the “recommended” dosage of resveratrol.

As an example, Dr. Xi Zhao-Wilson has authored an article entitled “What Dose of Resveratrol Should Humans Take?” which extrapolates the recommended dosages based on the results of the experiments conducted on animals and reaches the conclusion that between twenty and thirty milligrams daily should be sufficient. The problem here is that although Dr. Zhao-Wilson has a legitimate Ph.D. in Cellular and Developmental Biology from The Ohio State University, she is also the Chief Executive Officer of a company that sells resveratrol, in twenty milligram tablets no less. This is the basic problem with determining a proper Resveratrol dosage, in the absence of properly conducted clinical trials on human beings, there is no valid information to base dosage amounts on. Instead, the only people making dosage recommendations are people with a vested interest in selling as much resveratrol as they can.

So What Should You Do?

Until the ongoing clinical trials begin publishing results, there will be no official recommended Resveratrol dosage. However, it is known that many thousands of people have been taking “mega doses” for years now with no negative effects and in the one experiment on humans – the one related to lowering blood sugar levels – the result came from “mega doses” of three to five whole grams of Resveratrol supplements. Therefore, as is often the case with nutritional supplements, it is largely up to the consumer to find the right dose that works for them. Ideally people should begin with small doses and gradually increase them until they notice tangible results.