Another excuse to go to happy hour

When a Wall Street Journal story about the health benefits of beer made the rounds on the Internet last week, a number of people e-mailed the article to me. I’m not sure what exactly I should make of that. Maybe all it means is that there are a lot of beer drinkers out there who want to hear some good (and healthy) news about their favorite beverage. Nothing wrong with that.

The article made some easygoing fun of the supposed rivalry between the beer camp and the wine camp. For sometime now we’ve heard the reports that a glass of wine at lunch or in the evening can have a positive effect on cardiovascular health. Now some are saying that the very same is true of beer. Are the wine aficionados really ready to take up arms to defend the honor of their merlots and chardonnays against the hopped up hordes? Something tells me that this is one instance where we can all just get along.

The thing that jumped out at me from this article was a single word: “homocysteine.” Professor Norman D. Kaplan of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas told the Wall Street Journal that beer is rich in B-vitamins and folates, “both of which keep homocysteine blood levels in check.” Thank you, professor. I’ll take it from here.

I’ve addressed the importance of managing homocysteine levels in a number of e-Alerts (most recently in “The Power of the Single Word” 8/8/02), so you’re probably already well aware that an elevated homocysteine level is an urgent warning that your cardiovascular system may be in danger of developing a stroke or a heart attack. And a number of recent studies have also associated high homocysteine with a risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Is beer the best way to get your daily B-vitamins and folates? Probably not. But if it helps a little, what’s the harm?

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute