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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."
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
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.
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.
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.
You raised a very interesting point there. Ales in Scotland were traditionally brewed with bittering agents other than hops, (Heather, thyme, myrltle, pine needles etc). Hops generally does not grow in Scotland and so has to be imported. After Scotland lost its indepedance folowing the act of union, it was decreed that all ales must be brewed with hops.
Scottish brewers had no choice but to import hops, mostly from Kent. A tax was payable on the purchase of hops, putting Scottish brewers at a disadvantage. The solution was to brew with less hops but more malt. So a pint of Scottish heavy would have had less bitterness, (less hops), but a more full bodied flavour than its English equivalent.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
While there is no way to conclusively prove scientific theories, your confusion is explored in the book, The China Study . The author uses good science and takes a look at a range of related studies, the methodology of nutritional research today and historically, and the dubious sources of funding for much of nutritional research. The title of the book is somewhat misleading, as The China Study itself is merely the most recent study in the book and only one chapter is dedicated to it. Although the findings are mentioned throughout and the appendix goes into more detail.
The short story:
1) Animal protein is consistently linked as the primary enabler for diseases of affluence such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Both in epidemiological studies and biochemically.
2) Studies that attempt to reduce nutrition to the study of individual compounds will never be able to provide a clear picture of health because there are a myriad of compounds in foods that have a combinatorial effect on health.
3) Physicians in the United States are only required to take approximately ~20 hours on nutrition in a classroom (that's time actually sitting there) . That is less than half a regular college course. And most often that course is wholly unrelated to overall health and more of a review on protein synthesis and nutrient absorption which most biology undergrads already get.
4) The Dairy, Beef, Pork, and Egg consortiums are large, powerful, and highly consolidated. They also fund almost all of the studies on nutrition at research institutions in the United States. Coincidentally, they therefore get to pick what is researched or at least which projects they will fund. Saying "there's a $1 million grant for anyone using milk on a calcium study" will quickly get you a researcher that needs some scratch.
5) Studies done exclusively in the United States or Europe such as the famous Nurses Study are flawed because the vast majority of westerners eat a western diet that is at the high end of meat and fat consumption. Even vegetarians in western countries have a nutritional profile that is "western" in comparision to other countries where heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are nonexistent.
This story is yet another example of how studying nutrients in reduction can only lead to inconclusive or misleading results. For example, even though this chemical in beer may kill cancer in a lab rat if a pure dose is given to it, what happens when rats are fed beer in those quantities? Alcoholism, liver cancer, throat cancer, overweight, dead. This is merely a drug effect for the creation of some new novelty drug that probably has some other side effect. Yet the headline reads like an endorsement to go out and drink beer! No, there's no such thing as cerrosis of the liver. Those alcoholics aren't killing themselves, they're healthier than Lance Armstrong!
That law must have been changed at some point. Last time I was in Scotland, I drank ... um ... quite a bit ... of heather ale. The hoppy ales still predominated, of course, but it seemed like at least half the pubs had heather ale on tap. Good stuff; I do love my hops, but I'll certainly take a pint or five of heather on occasion.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
closest relative of hops is cannabis.
i have a dated paperback (late 60s?) from straight arrow press that suggests the grafting of hops to the rootstock of reefer as a form of camouflage while growing.Serenity now, insanity later.
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.
It has been known for a long time that beer is beneficial, and that it helps to prevent cancer, or to endure it better. This is most especially true concerning the colon, and the organs.
Of course there will be the usual comments about drunkeness, but only very low IQ people connect the two.
I'm glad to see it finally published.
Michael
West coast IPA's from the US typically have even more hops than your average IPA and are sometimes called "double" IPA's. For maximum hop-age try Stone's Ruination IPA from the San Diego area.
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.
Indeed. One of the first major studies that dealt with the topic was done in the UK back in the 1970's. It was what's now often called a "data dredging" study, digging up lots and lots of medical records, running correlations of everything against everything else, to discover what might be correlated with long life.
They expressed a bit of surprise that their main results turned out to be about alcoholic beverages. They reported that, while drunkards didn't do too well, teetotallers didn't do a lot better. Those who lived longest were what they called "moderate" drinkers. Many readers here in the US were a bit surprised to discover that this meant 3 or 4 "drinks" (about 1 ounce or 25-30 ml alcohol each) per day for the average-size person. Effectiveness fell off on either side of this peak level.
They also said that people who drank mostly beer or wine showed the most benefit. Distilled beverages were only about half as effective. But drinking distilled booze mixed with fruit juices was about as good for you as beer or wine. They conjectured that the benefit was from both the alcohol and the vitamins produced by yeast or fruit.
There was a strong "further research is needed" in the summary. After all, it was just a correlation study, and said little about causation. Since then there have been a lot of more-detailed studies. This study is just the latest in a series, and a lot more research is still needed.
Finding volunteer subjects is perhaps easier with these studies than with most.
And it has been fun watching the media try to spin the results of study after study that show the benefits of (moderate) alcohol consumption.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.