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Ingredients in Beer as a Cancer Treatment?
ThePuceGuardian writes to tell us Biology News Net is reporting that one of the compounds found only in hops has gained rapid notice as a micronutrient that may help prevent many types of cancer. From the article: "Quite a bit is now known about the biological mechanism of action of this compound and the ways it may help prevent cancer or have other metabolic value. But even before most of those studies have been completed, efforts are under way to isolate and market it as a food supplement. A "health beer" with enhanced levels of the compound is already being developed."
this sure will make the cancerward a more cheerful place...
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
I suppose I can drink more beer, but purely for medicinal purposes mind you.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
OK, so it Beer is some kind of health drink you should expect to see a natural progression of evolution to the following affects.
Alcoholics will thrive just so long as they stay away from any attempt to recover.
Recovered Alcoholics will become extinct.
I guess everyone else becomes the control group.
No big investments necessary, because cancer treatment 'clinics' are already in place on every corner in every city, worldwide. Except Iran and North Korea, maybe. Poor folks!
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
So your saying all these college kids which keep peeing on my lawn after they are drunk aren't worsening their health? That's EXACTLY the reason I haven't called the police to fine them :(.
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Hops also contains a slightly psychoactive substance, lupulin. Few beer drinkers know that amongst all plants the closest relative of hops is cannabis.
:)
Division Spermatophyta (seed plants)
Class Angiospermae (flowering plants)
Sub-Class Dicotyledons (two cotyledons on seedling)
Order Urticates (elms, mulberries, nettles)
Family Cannabinaceae (hops and cannabis)
Food for thought....
I suppose it's not so bad to smoke in the pub after all...
Why UNIX?
If it's for cancer...
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Strange but true, hops are related to marijuana. Hence the definite high you get from a pint of real beer vs. the the fuzzy-headed blaaah that a pint of fizzy yellow larger brewed in a 40,000 gallon chemical plant produces.
(I assume this mention of 'hops' means that the beer referred to is proper beer, aka ale, which has fortunately made a good comeback in the UK in the last 10-15 years. A harmless 'welcome to the UK' ceremony I like to perform on arrivals from... well, anywhere, really, except Ireland perhaps, is to go for a drink and subtly pressure them into trying a pint or two of ale. They tend to think about beer in terms of how much lager they can consume, neck three pints and get entertainly messy, even tho' the alcohol content is about the same.
Warning: do not try this on a school night *)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Good news why? Because I can in future have an excuse for traces of alcohol in my system especially when driving.
I suppose this health beer would have lots of hops. I have a suggestion for a name for it. We could call it an India Pale Ale. Oh, wait...
What's up with the title "Ingredients in Beer as a Cancer Treatment?".
This is slashdot for crying out loud... I would have expected "Beer Cures Cancer".
Beer! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
And so they discovered the secret of Homer Simpsons' envyiable health...
There are many things that may help prevent cancer.
There are very few things you can use to treat cancer.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
I for one Welcome our Beer Guzzleing overloards
There is nothing more 'real' about ale. Both styles produce good and tasty beers. Yes, macrolagers are swill, but a nice craft lager can have all the advantages of a good ale.
Yeah, but if down a few pints made with high quality Saaz hops grown around the Chernobyl plant, it'll clear that liver cancer right up.
... are sometimes found to be quite simple yet never covered by modern medicine (as you can't patent naturally occuring substances).
besides, if you have a loved one with cancer, would you prefer chemo or diet changes? I'll take the latter
Here's one of the two that I've stumbled across in my internet travels. It looks promising, but I haven't had anyone (lately) to be diagnosed... but bookmark and check later if a loved one is ever sick.
http://www.coljoe.com/
Take care
I can see the price of hops - and thus beer - going up now as more and more hops are used for cancer treatment.
Will the pharmaceutical companies try to regulate hops to keep the price up?
I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Ben Franklin
So let's see... they've discovered a specific element in beer that extends your life?
THE SPICE MUST FLOW!
What makes you think this hasn't already happened? Alcohol or some derivative has been around since forever, and it seems to be a contributing factor to success in movies, music, government and business. I've never met a director/CEO that couldn't drink like a fish.
As far as I know the universe doesn't do controlled experiments (or at least doesn't publish them in Nature), so I'm not sure about the control group, but it would seem clear that not everyone could be drunk at the same time.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Praise the Goddess!
While in my mid-20s I'm not considering myself old, I wonder if the number of food/beverage-related cancer stories I've come across is still in the double digits. If someone had the endurance to sum them all up, I guess the result would be something like that:
Use common sense. Eat and drink whatever you have been eating and drinking all your life and whatever you feel like, but don't be excessive in quantity in either direction. Most important, eat and drink in enjoyable company of family or friends, take your time, and don't stress yourself out. While all of this is still no guarantee for anything, it certainly does not damage your overall health. Humanity has survived and prospered for millennia without reading a single cancer study.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
The solution to - and cause of - all life's problems. Glayvin!
Expand my brain, learning juice!
Both proved good for you, now we're rolling. What about that nestle coffee beer thing though? Is that going to cure cancer or perhaps even cause it?
~HTP~ Hug that tux
My interest level in free software just shot way up, especially as regards the "Free as in beer" aspect!
Hoppy times are here again - who's pouring?
The article is a little light on the scientific details, but I assume (making an ass of u and me) that the evidence they're talking about are enzymatic activity assays from isolated tissues. A significant minority of all human genes have been implicated in the development of cancer - finding a compound that downregulates some of them in tissue culture isn't really surprising.
Similar evidence has been accumulated regarding a host of other compounds - as far as I'm aware, none of them have ever proven useful either as treatments or as prophylactics. That said, by all means, dose a population of mice with hops extract and see if it prevents them from getting cancer.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Doesn't that sound like a shampoo ad to you?
You should never feel bad about that. Don't let the (non-arrogant?) bastards get you down.
- "Beer. Beer, when?"
- "Beer today!"
- "Beer bood!"
----
too bad alcohol is a carcinogen. Oops!
I was just on Some Random Website the other day reading about how before hops found its way into beers (sometime around the fourteenth century, I think), its principle use in Europe was as a medicinal herb. Usually brewed as a tea, as I recall.
Another Fun Beer Fact: before the British "discovered" how to put hops in their beer, the primary flavoring agent they used was creeping charlie. Ever since I found that out, I've always kinda wondered what that would taste like ...
Another plant that seems to have tremendous health benefits (fightin' cancer, and alzheimer's, and as a general anti-inflammatory, etc.) is turmeric -- which is one of the primary ingredients of curry.
Hmmmm ... beer and curry ... the British must live fer freakin' ever.
Just to throw a little contrary slant to things, I propose that all beer production be halted, as these hops can probably be processed to a cancer-curing pill of much improved potency than mere beer. It would be a waste to continue to use hops to brew beer.
There. I'm not really that strongly opinionated about the matter, but know my comment will be needed, to balance out all the 'drink more beer, prevent cancer' comments here.
resigned
Based on all the "medical studies" regarding cancer lately, I have developed a theory. I have not found a counterexample. If you are aware of one, please post a followup.
My theory is that all food and beverage either prevent or cause cancer. In most cases, they do both based on dosage. A small amount prevents it, a large amount causes it. Therefore I recommend small doses of everything. A small McDonald's french fry every couple weeks prevents cancer, a large McD's fry every day causes it. A can of beer every few weeks prevents cancer, a keg a day will cause cancer (and many other problems).
You get the idea. Every time one of these alleged "studies" comes out, my theory is proven. Any counterexamples?
I was going to say something like...
*or**or**or perhaps even*...Oh well. I guess personal responsibility will have to take care of such thngs...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I already have a beer with "enhanced levels of these compounds". It's called Devil Dancer Tripel IPA, it's brewed in michigan, and it's delicious! There are a number of other beers like it, the style usually being called Imperial IPA, or double IPA.
The only problem, it's a bit...mmmm...strong, at 13.something percent alcohol, it's a bit more than the health types recommend you drink a day to get the wine like antioxidant effects from beer. My solution is to share my strong beers with friends, as I have no intention of giving myself a buzz every night.
Oh, one more problem, it's $12 a 4 pack...hmmm...
Maybe 'the government' can subsidize extra hoppy (especially dry hopped) ales? You know...for health?
you cannot dodge the quad laser. jumping is useless.
Ahhh....so that's what causes beer goggles!!
It's not liver cancer you have when using said treatment.
A little known fact (not described in the High School history books) is that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth because they had run out of beer and needed to make more. I had always held the founders in high esteem, and this news just elevates that.
From the article:
"In recent years, it has also been shown that some prenylflavonoids found in hops are potent phytoestrogens, and could ultimately have value in prevention or treatment of post-menopausal "hot flashes" and osteoporosis - but no proper clinical trials have been done to study this."
So there is an estrogen-like substance in beer as well. Hmmm... maybe that explains the enlarged chest of men who drink a lot of beer...
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
I always said that you could drink enough beer to cancel out smoking cigarettes.
I propose government funding for beer. :-)
Guinness IS Good For You!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4438938.stm pathway
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Volume! FTA ""Most beer has low levels of this compound, and its absorption in the body is also limited. It clearly has some interesting cancer chemopreventive properties, and the only way people are getting any of it right now is through beer consumption." It's a good thing that I driknk so much of it
It is known by archeologists that the process of creating beer in ancient societies (Egypt, Africa), often led to the contamination of the storage containers by the streptomycedes bacterium. This in turn led to the production of the antibiotic "tetracycline". The physicans of the time knew that beer was a good cure for ailments, but not why.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Made by a handfull of priests. You can only buy it at the back door of the cloister, easily located in the middle of f*cking nowhere. The bottles don't have labels, you can recognise them by the capsule. They only allow you to buy one (wooden) crate at a time. You have to promess not to resell it. If you taste it, you will realise God does love you. http://www.sintsixtus.be/eng/index2.html
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
{homer mode}hmmmm, beeeeeerrrr!!!{/homer mode}
;)
I knew it all along, beer is good for you. While hops aren't on the list of ingredients for the very early beers the germans brewed ("Met"), legend has it that the Romans put in hops into the German's beers in order to make them more "preservable" because hops have an anti-biotic effect on the micro-organisms spoiling freshly brewed beer, but seemingly their secret agenda was to calm the wild german tribes down because hops also have a very soothing effect on a person.
Well, they lost anyway, and I guess "Hermann der Cherusker" and his hordes had a few to celebrate their victory in the "Varus"-battle which cost the Romans about three legions. Hops or not, here's to beer
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
Beer! It's the reason I get up in the afternoon.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
but I assume (making an ass of u and me) that the evidence they're talking about are enzymatic activity assays from isolated tissues.
I think that is a fair assumption (caveat included). But note that the trigger for looking at the bioflavinoids was a statistical anomoly that has been dubbed the French Paradox. Some groups in France who eat a traditional diet that is high in fats and such were having a much lower incidence of heart disease than was predicted by American based statistics. Several investigations by unrelated researchers have been done and these clearly show that the high levels of proanthocyanidins in french table wines protect against cholesterol and LDL diseases. And almost as an aside, it was found that these very potent antioxidants also protect against some cancers.
The proanthocyanidins found in wine, grape seeds, and virtually all deeply colored fruits are in the larger class of bioflavinoids. The prenylflavinoids found in hops are also bioflavinoids.
Having spent some time in Corvallis and thus being aware of the beverage of choice at OSU, I am not at all surprised that OSU took up the study of the prenylflavonoids in beer. I think that's a good choice for pragmatic reasons-- it would be very easy to find candidates for a four year longitudinal study of beer ingestion among the OSU undergraduate population. It would be much more difficult to entice OSU students into embibing significant quantities of red wine... the wine drinkers all go to University of Oregon, not Oregon State University, you see. While the two are only about an hour's drive from each other, OSU and UO students mix about as well as a "lager" poured from a can mixes with a "chianti" from a box.
Back to a more serious level: there are now a number of grape seed extracts (GSE) being sold as nutritional supplements. These are an inexpensive way of assuring that there are plenty of bioflavinoids in the diet-- although they probably are not as fun as drinking a quart of red wine a day,
Finally the medical community is starting to catch up with me. Every night I smoke some pot for my glaucoma, drink wine to prevent a heart attack, and now I'm adding beer in to ward off cancer. Next their going to figure out that Cheetos prevent Alzheimers and I'll be all set!
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.
One class of compounds called angiogenesis inhibitors help protect the body from cancers by blocking the enzymes emitted by the cancers to signal the body to build a blood supply to the cancer. No additional blood supply means the cancer stalls out.
The pioneer in the area is a Dr. Judah Folkman. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, don't pass up the opportunity.
According to Dr Folkman, the food with the highest amount of angiogenesis inhibitors found so far are Indian curries.
So have curries with your beer and attack the cancers on two fronts.
Even better, restrict your intake of iron and attack the cancers on three fronts. Too much iron can increase the growth of certain cancers.
I'm replying to your sig because I see this a lot.
Free speech is being able to speak anonymously, and there are a lot of great anonymous comments posted, some anonymous because the poster is fearful of their job. You're only hurting yourself by not listening.
Help I'm a rock.
For those who don't know, India Pale Ale (IPA) is an extraordinarily hoppy beer drunk by beer geeks or Hop Heads.
Another cool thing about hops, and why hops have been used to flavor beer for the last several centuries, is that it's also a preservative. During the British Empire, British subjects wanted their ale, but the long voyage via ship made their ale rather skunky. So, in order to get their beer to say, India, they had to heavily hop the beer to preserve them. And that's how we got IPA--I also guess the folks who drank their IPA were less likely to get cancer.
Thank doG for Xanthohumol!! Just another dyslexic agnostic...
6 pack of the good stuff.... $10
Some pretzles to go with.... $5
Look on wifes face just now when I told her I'd be drinking 'health beer' from now on... Gawd, what a look!
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
Sweet, maybe now people won't think I'm crazy for drinking IPAs with 70+ IBUs. I'm just preventing cancer.
Why not just extract the micronutrient chemically and put it in a vitamin supplement? There's probably someone at GNC working on this already. The problem with beer is the ethanol (a.k.a alcohol) it contains.
"Doc, I've lived a healthy life, I haven't smoked or drank and have worked out 3 times a week, what else can I do?" "Have you tried Red Stripe?"
" i r 1337. j00 a l0z3r "
That talk kinda makes you cry, doesn't it?
That's right..cry those nerdly tears
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
OOOH! Cliche for the win!
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Well, I guess now we know why college kids rarely get cancer.
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6718
... you're preventing cancer ... LOL!!!
Remember you're not just smoking pot and drinking beer for fun
Symmetry demands that comment is modded Funny.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
That is all.
"beer thirty"
humans are omnivores, we eat everything
and it'd not, as the poster pontificates, so much what one eats and drinks as it is how much
i'm off now for a nice bitter and a bit of venison backstrap with whole grain bread, a salad, and for desert,....'honey, it's almost time for your Sunday hummer"
Not so. There are many things that you you can use. Sadly, few of them will work successfully
You may be right, but the article says: "Some beers already have higher levels of these compounds than others. The lager and pilsner beers commonly sold in domestic U.S. brews have fairly low levels of these compounds, but some porter, stout and ale brews have much higher levels."
So you might want to go with the Extra Stout instead of the Draught.
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb
Would this nutrient be present in high concentrations in vegemite? I know vegemite is mostly brewery yeast scum, but isn't it filtered out of the beer after the hops are in?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Great, so now the drug companies are going to patent beer?
"Free as in beer" tag disappearing in five, four, three, two...
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
NO- 12ounces of prevention...
Registered Linux User #404114 [url=http://www.punkoiska.com][img]http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/4379/posbannercf5.g
For treatment, one would mix beer, a lump of malt, and oil together, then repeat the following incantation three times:
After Anu [had created the sky],/ The sky had created [the earth],/ The earth had created the rivers./ The rivers had created canals,/ The canals had created the marsh,/ The marsh created the worm./ The worm went forth weeping, before Shamash,/ Before Ea in tears (saying),/ "What will you give me to eat?/ What will you give me to suck on?"/ "I will give you ripe figs, armannu fruit, and apples."/ "Of what use to me are ripe figs, armannu fruit, apples?/ (instead), raise me up and let me live between the teeth and the jaw!/ I will suck the blood from the teeth!/ I will chew upon the food in the jaw!"/ "Because you have spoken thus, O worm,/ May Ea strike you with all the strength of his hand!"/
The doctor/priest (or 'asu') would then actually pull the tooth, a procedure that could only be facilitated by the application of beer. Later in history, ancient Egyptian women relied on beer to keep their skin clear. Hippocrates used beer as a diuretic (you have to admit, it's good for that!), and the Greeks generally relied on it as a fever reducer. Aretus of Capadocia recommended it for diabetes and migraine. It was used throughout the Middle Ages to calm the nerves and stimulate the appetite, and pillows stuffed with aromatic hops were used to address sleeping disorders until about a hundred years ago.
Of course, most of beer's reputation as a healthy beverage derives from simple observation: people who drank beer did not get sick as often as those who drank water. Thus, by the time the Mayflower made landfall on the New England coast (because their beer supplies were running low), your average European male drank upwards of a quart of the stuff a day, and it may have constituted a third of his daily caloric intake.
Of course, the reason beer was safer was because it was boiled, whereas the teetotaller's water, drawn direct from groundwater or the same stream everyone's sewers emptied into, was not. It's no coincidence that widespread 'temperance' movements gained popularity in the West at about the same time as municipal sewage and water systems gained a certain level of sophistication, and clean air and water standards began to be enacted and enforced. Along with these things came a sudden awakening to the dangers of alcoholism and the disagreeable side-effects of alcohol consumption - as if nobody had noticed in the last 5000 years that drinking too much beer could be bad for you! However, the risks involved with not drinking beer had been decreased, and the risks involved in drinking it came into pre-eminance.
In modern times, it seems we have come full circle, and the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption are more widely appreciated. (We've also started using leeches in medicine again, so who knows - maybe dentists will start the incantations again soon..) People who drink alcohol in moderation have fewer heart attacks and strokes, lower blood pressure, are at decreased risk of Alzheimers, and even tend not to catch colds as often. Their bones are stronger, their memories are sharper, their eyesight is improved, they are snazzier dressers, and all genders find them irresistable. In the time I've taken to write this, I've greatly decreased my personal risk of diabetes, arthritis, depression, pancreatic cancer, gallstones, hepatitis A, erectile dysfunction, and black lung disease (only one of those things was made up).
Slainte! Now, drink up.
Any posion can be made to look like a cure if the disease it 'cures' doesn't kill you first...
a closely related plant of hops is marijuana, so we should combine the two into a super health beer. We can help everyone be healthier with this new product.
So will health insurance be free as in beer, or will beer be free as in cancer treatment? I'm so confused.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
now took on a whole new meaning...
Oh well, what the hell...
Free speech is being able to speak anonymously,
Which I'm not stopping. However having said that, I have yet to see someone post anonymously because their government tried to stop free speech. Having said that, Americans do occassionally claim to be posting AC because of their employer, which leads me to my next point....
some anonymous because the poster is fearful of their job.
But they offer no proof or facts to their point. Only hearsay. I could post anonymously and claim to be an employer of whoever the article is about and attack them. But that doesn't make it true. It's impossible to know if someone is telling the truth about an employer when they don't provide any proof (which most of them don't), so their post is meaningless.
And there are a lot of great anonymous comments posted,
I've found the majority of ACs post in order to flame or post a slashdot meme. The amount of "in soviet russia" posts I've had to put up with has lessened considerably, as has the amount of flame-bait. Perhaps I was just missing all these great AC posts.
There are very few things you can use to treat cancer that also don't kill the patient.
Cancer preventing beer? There is a God.
I love my cat so much...I just want to make sure he's happy and healthy (see pic)http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1719/632/16 00/Simbaholic%20034.jpg
http://christellize.blogspot.com/
http://www.newpath4.com/thecancercurefromnewpath4c urecancer.htm .
Don't forget the Washington DC Weather Report for tomorrow >. htm .
http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg
Try to avoid mixing Ibuprofen with other painkillers. High likelihood to cause SJS > Steven Johnson Syndrome. Children too.
that we all already knew. and that is: beer solves all of lifes problems.
Alcohol: The cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
More about this angle from Japan Today, and another story suggesting beer has the same health benefits as red wine.
Guinness is good for you!?
Huh? Ya think I'm friggin' crazy?!
Hops are a very close relative of another member of the cannabis family. Other products might hold these trace chemicals, too.
moox. for a new generation.