This is one of the more interesting in vivo studies I've seen lately although the dose is a pretty whopping one at 4 g/kg. I think some of these
effects in this study are ones that some of us have noticed in ourselves albeit perhaps at a lower level.....
J Physiol. 2012 Apr 2. [Epub ahead of print]
Improvements in Skeletal Muscle Strength and Cardiac Function Induced by Resveratrol Contribute to Enhanced Exercise Performance in Rats.
Dolinsky VW, Jones KE, Sidhu RS, Haykowsky M, Czubryt MP, Gordon T, Dyck JR.
University of Alberta;
Abstract
Exercise training (ET) improves endurance capacity by increasing both skeletal muscle mitochondrial number and function, as well as contributing to favourable cardiac remodelling. Interestingly, some of the benefits of regular exercise can also be mimicked by the naturally occurring polyphenol, resveratrol (RESV). However, it is not known whether RESV enhances physiologic adaptations to ET. To investigate this, male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to a control chow diet or a chow diet that contained RESV (4g/kg of diet) and subsequently subjected to a program of progressive treadmill running for 12-weeks. ET-induced improvements in exercise tolerance were enhanced by 21% (p<0.001) by the addition of RESV to the diet. In soleus muscle, ET+RESV increased both the twitch (1.8-fold; p<0.05) and tetanic (1.2-fold; p<0.05) forces generated during isometric contraction, compared to ET alone. In vivo echocardiography demonstrated that ET+RESV also increased the resting left ventricular ejection fraction by 10% (p<0.05), and reduced left ventricular wall stress compared to ET alone. These functional changes were accompanied by increased cardiac fatty acid oxidation (1.2-fold; p<0.05) and favourable changes in cardiac gene expression and signal transduction pathways that optimized the utilization of fatty acids in ET+RESV compared to ET alone. Overall, our findings provide evidence that the capacity for fatty acid oxidation is augmented by the addition of RESV to the diet during ET, and that this contributes to the improved physical performance of rats following ET. PMID: 22473781