Drink beer to your health – part 4 - how beer can benefit your health

January 21, 8:38 PMBeer ExaminerCharlie Papazian

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A glass a day is OK

Preventing heart disease may be the primary benefit of moderate alcohol intake, but studies show that moder¬ate consumption of alcohol can benefit health in many other ways...

• Aging and longevity.    Italian research¬ers analyzed data from 34 scientific investigations into alcohol and health conducted in the US, Europe, Australia, Japan and China. The studies involved more than one million people. They found that moderate drinking of any kind—wine, beer or spirits—lowered the risk for death by 18% in women and 17% in men.          However, death rates were higher among men drinking more than four drinks a day and women drinking more than two.
• Dementia.    Scientists who study memory loss and dementia divide the process into three stages of advancing severity—age-related memory loss, mild cognitive impairment and, finally, dementia.        Recent studies: Italian researchers studied 121 people ages 65 to 84 with mild cognitive impairment. Those who had at least one alcoholic drink a day developed dementia at an 85% slower rate than those who didn't drink at all. And Harvard researchers, in a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association,  found that moderate drinking decreased the risk for Alzheimer's by 54% compared with not drinking.
• Diabetes.   Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City analyzed 32 studies on alcohol intake and diabetes and found that moderate consumption of alcohol (one to three drinks a day) lowered the risk for diabetes by 33% to 56% and the risk of developing diabetes-related heart disease by 34% to 55%.
• Kidney stones.     Finnish researchers found that drinking a bottle of beer a day reduced the risk for kidney stones by 40%.
• Gallstone disease.  Harvard re¬searchers found that both wine and beer reduced the risk for gallstone dis¬ease (by speeding up the emptying of the gallbladder after a meal).
• Osteoporosis.    Researchers have found that social drinking was associ¬ated with higher bone mineral density in older men and women.
• Prostate cancer.    Men ages 40 to 64 who drank four or more glasses of red wine a week halved their risk for prostate cancer, say scientists from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. And researchers in Austra¬lia and New Zealand found that beer intake decreases prostate specific antigen (PSA), a biomarker for prostate cancer.      Caution: The National Cancer Institute  says that immoderate drinking can cause cancer of the mouth, esophagus, pharynx and larynx, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alco¬holism says that chronic alcohol in¬take—more than one drink a day—may increase the risk for breast cancer by about 10%.
• Rheumatoid arthritis.   People who drink alcohol regularly are up to 50% less likely to develop rheumatoid arthri¬tis than nondrinkers, say Scandinavian researchers in the June 5, 2008, issue of Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.  One possible reason is that alcohol reduces inflammation.

  Also see:

Drink beer to your health – part 3 - moderation is key

Drink beer to your health – part 2 - lifestyle factors

Drink beer to your health – part 1 - why beer and hard liquor may be just a beneficial as wine

Charles Bamforth, PhD., Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California, Davis was recently interviewed by Bottom Line Personal  .  His article appeared in the October 15 issue.  It is reprinted here in parts with permission from Professor Bamforth.