The Rapidly Growing Alcohol-as-Health-Food Movement
A black pint a day REALLY keeps the doctor away
Instead of the potentially deadly aspirin-a-day therapy for
heart disease that many in the medical mainstream advocate,
perhaps their advice SHOULD be
Down a pint of Guinness every day!
Yes, the toast-worthy findings just keep rolling in for the
rapidly growing alcohol-as-health-food movement - of which I’m a
proud charter member, by the way. And in just the latest bit of
heartening news, a recent study conducted by the University of
Wisconsin (presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart
Association, no less) shows that moderate daily consumption of
dark beers like the ubiquitous Guinness can significantly reduce
markers for platelet aggregation
That’s a fancy way of saying it helps prevent the dangerous
blood clotting that often causes heart attacks in those with
heart disease.
Whether it is the alcohol in the brew itself or other factors
like the action of antioxidant flavonoids (especially plentiful
in darker beers, as in the red wines) that contributes to the
reduction in heart risk has not been firmly established.
However, there is abundant research out there suggesting that
both are beneficial.
What’s really funny (more like tragic, actually) about this is
the fact that in two separate, unrelated online sources – one of
which is the venerable BBC itself – the same opening point was
used to lead into the story: That a pint a day of dark beer may
work AS WELL AS ASPIRIN at reducing the risk of heart attacks
due to blood clotting. This just goes to show how pervasive the
influence of the dead-wrong medical mainstream really is,
because
Aspirin therapy has been shown to INCREASE the risk of
clot-related heart attack, especially among those with LOWER
cholesterol! (Read my Daily Dose from 4/29/03 for more on this)
Listen, if it’s a choice between the two, pour yourself a
healthy, satisfying pint of Guinness or other rich, flavorful
dark beer every day – and live to be a pallbearer at the
aspirin-poppers funerals, please!
Oh, and don’t worry about that other health “myth” regarding
regular beer consumption. Keep reading
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Czech out this good news about brews
We can’t call them “beer bellies” any more.
That’s right: Despite the mainstream myth that regular beer
drinking can give you an outsize gut, some large-scale European
research shows that even heavy beer drinkers were no more likely
to have large bellies or be overweight than non-drinkers.
Conducted in the Czech Republic, where beer is the most popular
drink among both sexes, the nearly 2000 subjects involved in the
study appeared to be at identical risk for weight gain whether
they drank beer moderately (1 liter per week), copiously (7
liters or more per week), or not at all.
In case you were wondering about the study’s location, the Czech
Republic was chosen because it is the ideal place for such
research – since beer drinking in that nation (both mealtime and
recreational) crosses all demographic groups and is not the
least bit socially stigmatized, according to the European
Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And having been there myself, I
can tell you there’s no such thing as “lite beer” in those
parts
Thanks to this research, those deluded weenies in the mainstream
that are alcohol-hostile (a number that’s shrinking by the day,
thankfully) now have one less lie to throw at you for why you
shouldn’t drink!
So what should we start calling those ungainly guts, now that
there’s proof that beer is not the culprit? How about “bread
bellies,” since that’s really what they are
Giving the beer bullies a belly ache,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
