TAKE A RED WINE PILL

DAVID SINCLAIR, 46, is a professor in the department of genetics at harvard Medical school and co-founder and co-chief editor of the journal aging. RESEARCH suggests that calorie restriction — that is, living on severely reduced diets of just 600700 calories a day — could improve our life spans, possibly because it activates genes called sirtuins which are thought to stop cells getting old.

In 2003, I did some experiments on yeast to see if there were any compounds that would mimic the effects of calorie restriction.

We discovered that resveratrol, an antioxidant found in the stalks and skin of red grapes and in a plant called Japanese knotweed, appeared to boost the lifespan of yeast by up to 70 per cent, using a similar mechanism.

We repeated the experiments, feeding resveratrol to flies, worms and mice. In every case, it extended the life span.

But for a human to get these sort of benefits, you’d need to drink about 100 glasses of red wine a day. I drink red wine anyway because I enjoy it, but for the purposes of resveratrol I’ve been taking it in supplement form since 2005.

My wife and my parents are trying it, too. I feel fine and people tell me I look OK, but the proof will come later.

It’s not a magic bullet. In our research, the mice that live longer seem to die from the same causes, just later than we might expect.

So we’re not stopping heart disease, Alzheimer’s or cancers, we’re just delaying them.

Ultimately I don’t know for sure what taking it will do, but I do know what will happen if I don’t.