...and more good news
Apr. 6th, 2006 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerfrom a friend:
From issue 2542 of New Scientist magazine, 11 March 2006, page 19
CHEERS everybody! Beer may be as good for your health as red wine and green tea, damping down the arterial inflammation that leads to heart disease. It might even make you happier.
Dietmar Fuchs and colleagues of Innsbruck Medical University in Austria knew that tea and wine could suppress the inflammation in white blood cells, and wondered whether beer might have the same effect. Sure enough, when they mixed beer with white blood cells that had been tricked into turning inflammatory, the activated cells calmed down again.
Exposed to alcoholic or non-alcoholic beer, the inflammatory cells stifled production of neopterin, a substance that leads to inflammation when it is overproduced. At the same time, the cells cut their consumption of tryptophan, an amino acid depleted by inflammatory cells.
Although the active compounds in beer are unknown, the researchers think that humulone, the substance from hops that makes beer taste bitter, may be involved (International Immunopharmacology, vol 6, p 390).
They also suggest that beer might make people jollier by blocking the depletion of tryptophan, from which the "happy" neurotransmitter serotonin is made. Beer itself also contains tryptophan. It may contribute to the relaxed feeling we get from drinking it.
From issue 2542 of New Scientist magazine, 11 March 2006, page 19
CHEERS everybody! Beer may be as good for your health as red wine and green tea, damping down the arterial inflammation that leads to heart disease. It might even make you happier.
Dietmar Fuchs and colleagues of Innsbruck Medical University in Austria knew that tea and wine could suppress the inflammation in white blood cells, and wondered whether beer might have the same effect. Sure enough, when they mixed beer with white blood cells that had been tricked into turning inflammatory, the activated cells calmed down again.
Exposed to alcoholic or non-alcoholic beer, the inflammatory cells stifled production of neopterin, a substance that leads to inflammation when it is overproduced. At the same time, the cells cut their consumption of tryptophan, an amino acid depleted by inflammatory cells.
Although the active compounds in beer are unknown, the researchers think that humulone, the substance from hops that makes beer taste bitter, may be involved (International Immunopharmacology, vol 6, p 390).
They also suggest that beer might make people jollier by blocking the depletion of tryptophan, from which the "happy" neurotransmitter serotonin is made. Beer itself also contains tryptophan. It may contribute to the relaxed feeling we get from drinking it.
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Date: 2006-04-07 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-07 02:15 pm (UTC)