Alcoholic drinks are subject to recreation and socialization. Numerous studies have shown health benefits from moderate alcohol intake especially wine. Drinking wine with meals is linked with lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Also wine consumption was shown to improve blood pressure levels. But what about other alcoholic beverages such as beer? Beer is popular beverage with men. Beer is also oldest drinks invented by mankind. Drinking beer has a long history as there is evidence of beer drinking in China 5,000 years ago. It was found lager beer can improve your health.
Lager beer is popular beer that is brewed, fermented and conditioned at low temperature. Some consider lager the best beer for heart health while others say dark beer is healthier due to higher level of antioxidants. Like wine, beer can have health benefits when consumed in moderation. According to researchers in the American Chemical Society’s men who drank either one alcoholic or non alcoholic lager daily had a more diverse set of gut microbes, which can reduce the risk for some disease. Beer contains compounds such as polyphenols as well as microorganism from its fermentation that could impact the variety of microbes in the human gut.
The study showed when both men and women consumed non-alcoholic lager beer for 30 days their gut microbiome diversity increased. Many of those same people were also in a second group that drank an alcoholic version of the beer and it did not have the same effect. So Ana Faria and colleagues wanted to see if they would find similar results with men in a different type of study — a parallel, randomized trial design — with two separate groups of participants. In this double blind study 19 healthy men were randomly divided into two groups who drank alcoholic or non alcoholic lager. It was found physical features did not change but both groups had greater bacterial diversity n their gut microbiome and higher levels of fecal alkaline phosphatase.
Based on the pilot study the researchers that consuming one bottle of beer regardless of its alcohol content may be beneficial to gut microbiome and intestinal health for men. But the safest consumption is none, non alcoholic beer may be better for health.
