Thank the Booze Gods: Beer Could Be Good for Your Brain
Beer is bad for you, right? It makes you fat, messes up your brain cells, and is generally responsible for all kinds of terrible frat boy behavior. Wrong! Well, yeah...the terrible frat boy behavior and the empty calories are all true, but scientists may have just made the greatest discovery of our time: Beer could actually be good for your brain.
A study published in Behavioral Brain Research discovered that xanthohumol, a flavonoid found in beer, caused young mice to show “a significant improvement in cognitive flexibility.” Scientists believe that these flavonoids could be instrumental in helping our brains develop memories. Though the amount of beer you would have to drink to experience the benefits the mice did — about 2,000 liters — would lead to alcohol poisoning and likely death, the news is great in terms of developing medications that could help our brains function better.
Previous studies have shown other ways in which moderate beer consumption can be good for you. Though wine tends to get all the cred, beer is actually rich in antioxidants and one to two beers a day can help lower your chance of heart disease. It’s also a great source of fiber, vitamin B, and silicon, which is good for your bone density.
Beer isn’t the only alcohol that’s having a good run in the scientific community these days, either. A study from earlier this year suggested that a compound found in red wine and dark chocolate may also have benefits for your brain. In the study, participants were either given resveratrol supplements or placebos. Those who had been given the supplements were later able to recall more words on a list than those given the placebo, and the supplement takers also showed more activity in the hippocampus — the area of the brain associated with memory-making.
One interesting facet of the beer and cognitive function study was that, though younger mice showed significant improvement, older mice did not have the same results. Which may finally explain why there’s no chance of you going on a keg-standing, bong-chugging bender once your college days are far behind you.
And maybe you can’t enjoy those cognitive benefits without drowning yourself in beer, but you may as well allow yourself a tiny bit of xanthohumol a day and hope for the best. After all, you have plenty of other medical reasons to kick back with one or two cold ones a day.
[Pic via Morguefile]
