Can having a beer now and then prevent RA in women?
If you’ve heard those ads for drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis, you know they have some pretty scary side effects. Like zapping your immune system.
But one of the best ways to prevent it — if you’re a woman, that is — may be sitting in your fridge right now.
It’s that six-pack of your favorite brew.
Two studies have found that moderate beer drinking — meaning two to four beers a week — can cut a woman’s risk of getting the disease by nearly a third. One expert called that “astonishing.”
The research involved more than 200,000 registered nurses, who were tracked over a period of years.
Whether the findings would apply to men isn’t known, said the lead researcher, Dr. Bing Lu, an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Boston. But RA, he noted, is mainly a woman’s disease.
The malady, which is a form of immune dysfunction, now afflicts over 1.5 million Americans, usually beginning in early adulthood.
No one knows exactly why beer is so effective in helping prevent the disease. But whatever the secret, it should be good news for gals — especially those with a family history of RA.
And even if you don’t like beer, it doesn’t seem to take very much to achieve the desired effect. A little beer, it seems, can go a long way in keeping a painful condition at bay.
Not to mention the dangerous meds prescribed for it.
Sources:
“Could a few beers a week cut a woman’s rheumatoid arthritis risk? HealthDay, 5/14/14, liveandworkwell.com
