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Beer Hops Compounds Could Help Protect Against Alzheimer's Disease

posted by mrpg on Monday November 14 2022, @09:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the beer-is-there-anything-it-can't-do? dept.

hubie writes:

Beer hops compounds could help protect against Alzheimer's disease:

Beer is one of the oldest and most popular beverages in the world, with some people loving and others hating the distinct, bitter taste of the hops used to flavor its many varieties. But an especially "hoppy" brew might have unique health benefits. Recent research published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience reports that chemicals extracted from hop flowers can, in lab dishes, inhibit the clumping of amyloid beta proteins, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD).

AD is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease, often marked by memory loss and personality changes in older adults. [...] Accordingly, preventative strategies and therapeutics that can intervene before symptoms appear are of increasing interest.

One of these strategies involves "nutraceuticals," or foods that have some type of medicinal or nutritional function. The hop flowers used to flavor beers have been explored as one of these potential nutraceuticals, with previous studies suggesting that the plant could interfere with the accumulation of amyloid beta proteins associated with AD. So, Cristina Airoldi, Alessandro Palmioli and colleagues wanted to investigate which chemical compounds in hops had this effect.

[...] In tests, they found that the extracts had antioxidant properties and could prevent amyloid beta proteins from clumping in human nerve cells. The most successful extract was from the Tettnang hop, found in many types of lagers and lighter ales. [...] The researchers say that although this work may not justify drinking more bitter brews, it shows that hop compounds could serve as the basis for nutraceuticals that combat the development of AD.

Journal Reference:
Alessandro Palmioli, Valeria Mazzoni, Ada De Luigi, et al., Alzheimer's Disease Prevention through Natural Compounds: Cell-Free, In Vitro, and In Vivo Dissection of Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) Multitarget Activity, ACS Chem. Neurosci. 2022 DOI: 10.1021/acschemneuro.2c00444

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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday November 18 2022, @05:21PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Friday November 18 2022, @05:21PM (#1280365) Journal

    Definitively good things, like water for the crops, is good. Construing it to, God made water to rain on the vineyards, so Wine/Beer is good. Is a bit of a large stretch.

    https://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org/materials/beer-and-wine-the-bibles-counsel/ [adventistbiblicalresearch.org]

    The term strong drink presents no major translation problems because only one Hebrew word, shekar, lies behind it. But even so, the translation strong drink is more general than it ought to be. Modern readers may well think of strong drink as distilled liquor. But that is not what the Bible means by the term shekar. Since the process of distilling alcohol did not develop until around A.D. 500, the strongest alcoholic beverage people could make in Bible times contained only 14 percent alcohol by volume, approximately the maximum produced by natural fermentation. This fact tells us that the scriptural term strong drink certainly gives us no license to drink what we know today as hard liquor.
    [...]
    To give something of the picture these 19 Old Testament texts convey, let’s look at what some of them say about shekar: Leviticus 10:9 prohibits its use by a priest in ministry; Numbers 6:2, 3 forbids Nazarites from drinking it; in Judges 13:3, 4 an angel warns Samson’s mother-to-be not to drink it during her pregnancy; in Deuteronomy 29:5, 6 God tells the Israelites that He did not provide this drink for them in their wilderness wanderings.
    [...]
    Isaiah (51:21); Jeremiah (23:9); Hosea (4:11; 7:5); Joel (1:5); and Habbakuk (2:15) are among the Bible prophets who point out the ill effects, both physical and moral, which intoxicating wine produces.

    Proverbs 23:29-35 describes wine’s immediate physical effects (red eyes and blurred vision), its immediate social effects (strife and wounds), as well as the long-term results (woe and sorrow). Elsewhere, the book of Proverbs refers to wine as producing poverty (21:17) and violence (4:17). Isaiah adds that it deceives the mind (28:7), inflames a person, and leads to forgetfulness of God (5:11, 12).
    [...]
    In contrast to this large negative picture, about the only positive images the Bible gives of alcohol are three texts that note alcohol can produce a state of levity (certainly a valid physiological observation). The Bible writers also occasionally use wine to draw some favorable comparisons in figures of speech. (Yet they also use wine to symbolize some unfavorable comparisons as well. See the “wine of wrath” in Psalm 75:8 and Jeremiah 25:15).

    How then should we personally relate to alcohol in view of the overall picture given in the Old Testament? If one takes the whole picture into account and evaluates all the evidence, the most reasonable conclusion is that the only safe course is complete abstinence from alcohol in any form.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday November 18 2022, @08:13PM

    by pTamok (3042) on Friday November 18 2022, @08:13PM (#1280400)

    Yet the first miracle at Cana tells us that God was not averse to people drinking wine. Even today, children are given watered wine to drink in mainstream Israeli kindergartens. And, given the symbolism of the Last Supper and the continued use of Communion wine in most of Christendom, you can say that imbibing alcoholic drinks is a key part of being Christian*. The substance of the wine may well be Christ's blood, but its earthly form retains alcohol, with all its properties.

    *Some Methodists, as a personal decision, disagree. Mainstream Methodism does not require abstinence, 'merely', at minimum, a commitment to responsible drinking.