At long last PROOF! Drinking Beer is Good for you!

Apr 5, 2008 by Dan Taylor    6 Comments    Posted under: News

A (semi) recent publication over at the Scientific American reveals that drinking a moderate amount of beer per day can improve recall of both visual and emotional stimuli.  In other words…1-3 beers a day can actually improve your memory…and make you smarter!  And really let’s face it, by this point I should be a genius!  Yay beer!

If you want to read the whole article, it’s located Here, but if not, no worries, I’ll save you the time.  First, go to the fridge, grab an ice cold half liter (or a third of a liter if you happen to live in North America) of malt-hops beauty in a bottle and return.  I’ll wait…..no really…do it…..it’ll make you smarter.

Right…now that you’ve taken that glorious first sip, let me break it down quick and dirty style.  Basically it works like this:

“There are human epidemiological data of others indicating that mild [to] moderate drinking may paradoxically improve cognition in people compared to abstention,” says Maggie Kalev, a research fellow in molecular medicine and pathology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a co-author of an article in The Journal of Neuroscience describing results of a study she and other researchers performed on rats. “This is similar to a glass of wine protecting against heart disease, however the mechanism is different.”

In other words…1-3 (or maybe even one more…depends on your individual tolerance) glasses of beer a day helps to improve memory, by way of strengthening the NR1 receptors, a subunit of N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors (right, if you’re so inclined, click the link).  More so than those that do not drink a beer (or two…or three) per day.  Basically, the same concept that we’ve heard for a few years now, “Drink wine…it’s good for your heart”.

Hmm…I wonder…so if I have a glass of beer before dinner, and a glass of wine a bit later on in the evening, am I actually improving my quality of life?

In more ways than one I do believe!

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