Mudge

I dont know, studies say all kinds of things, so not stating my opinion on this one.
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Research shows beer is good for you
KEN WELLS, The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, August 13, 2002
©2002 Associated Press


URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...L&type=science




(08-13) 10:49 PDT (AP) --


Here's a good bar joke: Beer is good for you -- even better for you
than red wine.


Here's what's funnier: It could actually be true.


After more than 20 years of research and scores of studies on the
effects of moderate alcohol consumption on health, beer is slowly
bubbling to the top as a beverage that not only lifts spirits but
delivers protection against major ailments such as heart attacks,
stroke, hypertension, diabetes and dementia.


The data seem so compelling that the National Beer Wholesalers
Association, an Alexandria, Va., trade group representing the nation's
beer distributors, recently put on an oxymoronic sounding "health and
beer" seminar and put out a press release that declared: "Eat right,
exercise and drink a beer a day may be the way to keep the doctor
away."


Julie Bradford, editor of All About Beer Magazine, says slightly less
effervescently: "Well, we're not saying that beer is the new wonder
drug or suggesting that people take two beers and call us in the
morning." But evidence for beer's healthy side effects -- assuming
moderate consumption -- is strong enough to cause champions of beer
like Ms. Bradford to start insisting that the wine folks put a cork in
their claims that Beaujolais is superior to Bud.


Ms. Bradford's magazine, published in Durham, N.C., and delivered to
25,000 subscribers every other month, is an unabashed beer booster,
but she has company in more dispassionate places. Norman D. Kaplan, a
professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center in Dallas, has studied alcohol's impact on health as
part of his 40 years of research into the causes and treatment of
hypertension. He concludes that "the benefits of drinking moderate
amounts of alcohol is well beyond contention."


As for beer's specific virtues, Dr. Kaplan cites two recent
large-scale studies: in one, a look at 70,000 female nurses showed
that those who drank moderate amounts of beer had less hypertension
than did nurses who drank either wine or spirits. He also points to a
survey of 128,934 adults in the Kaiser Permanente managed-care system.
It showed that male beer drinkers among the group were at a
statistically significant lower risk of coronary-artery disease than
were men who drank red wine, white wine or spirits.


Dr. Kaplan says new evidence also suggests that beer, because of
mechanisms that "are not all clearly understood," may help increase
bone density, thus decreasing risk of fractures. And it also could
raise by 10 percent to 20 percent the so-called "good cholesterol"
levels in some people, thereby helping to ward off coronary-heart
disease and related afflictions such as dementia. Beer, he adds, is
also rich in B-vitamins and folates (a form of water-soluable
B-vitamin found in green leafy vegetables), both of which help keep
homocysteine blood levels in check. Homocysteine is a chemical that,
in elevated amounts, has been linked to an increased risk of heart
disease.


For those reasons, Dr. Kaplan says, "beer drinking has equal or
perhaps more benefit" than wine or spirits. As for the earlier wine
claims: "The wine people have done a major snow job" in peddling the
notion that wine is superior to beer or spirits, he says.


Considering that there are an estimated 80 million regular beer
drinkers in America, the emergence of beer as a health palliative is a
significant public-relations boost for the $55 billion-a-year beer
industry. Of course, beer makers are constrained from directly touting
any such benefits on labels or in advertising, hence the efforts by
trade groups like the NBWA to spread the word.


But before Joe Six Packs rush out to quaff a few in celebration, there
are major caveats. For one, researchers define moderate drinking as
one drink a day for women and up to two a day for men (a drink itself
being a 12-ounce beer, a five-ounce glass of wine or 1.5 ounces of
distilled spirits.)


Conversely, studies show that binge drinking -- the consumption of six
or more drinks in a day -- offers no benefits and puts drinkers at
increased risk for obesity and certain types of cancers, liver failure
and stroke.


Moreover, the way beer is often consumed in the U.S. -- in
heavy-drinking venues like football games or frat parties, for example
-- may make beer's health claims less useful than they might appear.
"The binge factor doesn't help your heart at all" and can even lead to
immediate problems, such as heart arrhythmias, says Margo Denke, a
medical colleague of Dr. Kaplan's at Texas Southwestern Medical School
who has done her own health-and-alcohol studies. "The science makes
sense; beer is distilled from hops and barley and some of the
beneficial nutrients are concentrated and passed along," she says.


Eric Rimm, an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at
Harvard's School of Public Health, believes the benefits of moderate
drinking may come from the ethanol component in alcohol. "True, beer
has B vitamins, but a single beer provides perhaps 2 to 6 percent of
the recommended daily requirement. To think you can get your RDA of
that from beer is probably inappropriate," he says.


But Dr. Rimm says the prevailing thinking is that ethanol has
significant antithrombotic or anticlotting effects similar to aspirin:
Health experts, for perhaps a decade, have recommended an
aspirin-a-day regimen for people over 50 to help prevent strokes and
heart disease.


More recently, Dutch and Danish researchers looked at beer and wine
side by side in studies; in the Dutch sample, in which participating
men drank four glasses of either beer, wine or spirits each day over
three months, beer seemed to be better at helping to control
homocysteine levels; a similar Danish study found no distinguishable
differences.


The wine folk seem unperturbed by the encroachment of beer into what
was once their exclusive PR domain. "We stand by the studies" that
link moderate wine consumption and health, says Juanita Duggan, head
of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, a Washington, D.C.,
trade group. "And besides, our products will always taste better than
theirs."


©2002 Associated Press

hurtyhair4u

Good news . Not a huge fan of the Red wine thing .

Good things come to those who WEIGHT !

KataMaStEr

Damn I better start using beer for my protein shake instead of milk

Vieope

KataMaStEr

Thats the point

LAM

milk protein isolates taste far better than the combination of whey & milk...

Dumbest statement made in the Anabolic Zone for Nov

TBD

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What you talking about Willis ?

QuestionGuy

i dont care!!, i loooooooooooooooooooooover beer i could drink it like water, i could literaly drink beer like water, i dont drink a lot, maybe 3-5 times a year but when i do i drink only beer, i love it ((i spent a lot of time in germany, maybe thats why lol ) i love sitting down with my good friends and just drink all night.......mmmm, today IS a saturday gives me an idea

QuestionGuy

(((( heineken is my favorite beer here, but when i go to europe its mostly becks))))

QuestionGuy

(((( Not that anyone give a shit, im just writing to reach 700 posts, heheh

derekisdman

HEINEKEN!? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon! - Frank Booth (Blue Velvet)

Homer: Hey! I saved your life! That egg sandwich could have killed you by cholesterol.
Lenny: Pfft, forget it, Homer. While it has been established that eggs contain cholesterol, it has not yet been proven conclusively that they actually raise the level of serum cholesterol in the human
blood stream.

QuestionGuy

hehehe, i love heineken that is just my personal beer of choice, but i bet here is beter ones but you know how pople are they are afraid to try something new,,, hehehhe i should try some other ones they have in those 6pack's