Can beer be good for health?

Beer is one of the oldest alcoholicdrinks - archaeological finds hint that it was brewed 9,000 years ago or even earlier. Like any alcohol, it negatively affects human health: the brain starts to work worse, the body becomes flabby, diseases of the heart, blood vessels, and other internal organs occur. Contrary to this, some people believe that beer can be healthy - even the results of some scientific studies indicate this. So, relatively recently, Portuguese scientists suggested that several men drink an intoxicating drink for four weeks. Periodically, they monitored their health status and made a sudden discovery that beer can actually be beneficial. Unfortunately for many drink lovers, not everything is so simple.

There are many useful substances in beer, but not everything is so simple.

ATTENTION! Drinking alcohol in any amount is harmful to human health.

How does beer affect the intestines?

The results of the experiment werepublished in the scientific journal Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The study involved 19 men, and their task was extremely simple - every day to drink 325 milliliters of beer. One half of the volunteers drank an alcoholic beverage, while the other half had a non-alcoholic option. For the test, a lager-type beer was chosen - when brewing such a drink, bottom fermentation is used, followed by fermentation at a low temperature. It will sound difficult for some, but this is an ordinary beer that is sold in stores, its share in the world market reaches 80%.

Lager is the most common type of beer

Surprisingly, at first the authors of the scientific work did notnoticed nothing strange. At a minimum, weight, body mass index, and markers of heart and other organ health did not change in men. However, at the very end of the experiment, they dramatically increased the diversity of bacteria in the intestines. And that's just fine, because microbiome diversity is the clearest indicator of gut health. According to scientists, the bacteria in the intestines directly affect the immune system, well-being and even the character of a person. Recently, researchers have found that the gut can influence the development of the heart in embryos.

The well-being and even the character of a person depends on the intestinal microbiome

You will be interested: Scientists have figured out how the brain interacts with the intestinal microflora

The benefits of beer for humans

So beer is good for gut health. What about other useful properties?

Previously, scientists talked about other usefulproperties of the popular drink. For example, once in hops, from which beer is obtained, a lot of xanthohumol, a substance that inhibits the development of carcinogens, was found. Based on this, Japanese researchers concluded that beer protects a person from cancer. In addition to this, among the properties of xanthohumol, one can single out the protection of the brain from age-related changes.

For those who didn't know, hop looks like this

It is also known that beer is an excellent detoxifier.aluminum compound organism. When a person inhales aluminum oxides while working, he gets poisoned, in which he coughs, suffers from fever and other terrible symptoms. Since beer helps to get rid of compounds, its use can be said to be recommended in case of aluminum poisoning.

Aluminum can cause poisoning

Beer has something in common with orange juice -we are talking about the same level of phosphorus, iron, magnesium, copper and other essential minerals. Also in beer there are easily digestible versions of vitamins B1 and B2, which help against anxiety, improve sleep, and so on.

By the amount of nutrients, beer can be compared with orange juice

On top of all this, some studies have shown that moderate beer drinkers are 41% less likely to suffer from kidney stones.

You can read more about vitamins here. There is a similar article about minerals, here it is.

Harmful properties of beer

As you can see, beer contains quitemany useful substances. But all their usefulness is shattered due to one factor - beer contains alcohol. Many may argue that there is much less of it in an intoxicating drink than in wine and, moreover, vodka, but this does not matter at all. In any amount, it has a detrimental effect on the brain, heart and all other organs of the human body. But if a person refuses to drink alcohol, improvements can occur within a month - we wrote about the pros in this material (I strongly recommend it!).