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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.
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?
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
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".
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.
Well, like other forms of battling cancer, this does have negative side-effects that could kill the host. Just as chemo can kill people if administered in incorrect amounts and WILL have serious health consequences no matter how it's administered, so does alcohol. Alcohol can become lethal, but regardless will have serious consequences when administered (some side-effects are broken arms, becoming pregnant, acting like a jack-ass and waking up next to an ugly person).
Although having said that, they have lessened the dangers in the treatment.
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
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 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 dunno, I moderate my intake, and have beneficial side effects - good friends and good stories. I suggest checking your prescription.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
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.
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
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!!
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
Alcohol can become lethal,
And so what. Everything in moderation. Even water is poisonous, as was clear from recent news reporting in Denmark. A young otherwise healthy woman drank excessive amounts of unsalted water as part of a selfadministered "cleansing", which skewed her salt balance and caused brain damage and subsequent death.
So please take everything with a grain of salt! (And a slice of lemon if it's tequila.)
-Lasse
Well, I guess now we know why college kids rarely get cancer.
Symmetry demands that comment is modded Funny.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
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.
Great, so now the drug companies are going to patent beer?
"Free as in beer" tag disappearing in five, four, three, two...
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.
now took on a whole new meaning...
Oh well, what the hell...