Researchers demonstrated that a powerful mechanism for resveratrol is to protect the arteries. This information is especially relevant to individuals with elevated blood sugar; it is also potentially valuable for anyone seeking to maintain cardiovascular health.

Lining the inside of your arteries is a coating of endothelial cells. These help regulate your blood pressure as well as provide a barrier of protection between what is floating around in your circulation and the potential accumulation of potentially undesirable substances in the walls of your arteries. This coating of endothelial cells is only one layer of cells deep, which means it is quite thin. As such, factors that injure it are a first step to set processes into motion that lead to arterial accumulation of damaged cholesterol and other damaged protein molecules, such as advanced glycation end products (AGES), caused by elevated blood sugar levels (fasting blood sugar should always be 90 or below).

Resveratrol improved the function of the endothelial cell coating, by helping it maintain proper structure even in the face of stress. The molecular mechanisms were documented by the researchers, demonstrating resveratrol's precise mechanism of protective action.