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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."
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 can see the label now:
"Use as directed. Side effects include enlarged waistline, impaired vision, and brewer's droop."
For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
man, I can see it coming: Canabis is good for memory, beer is good against cancer. Time to move to Holland for all of you !
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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.
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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.
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.
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.