A Beer a Day May Boost Your Gut Microbiome
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Can a beer a day keep the doctor away? That's what new research from Portugal suggests. In a pilot study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, men who drank one can of alcoholic or nonalcoholic lager a day for four weeks improved the diversity of their gut microbiome, the collection of microbes that live in the intestinal tract. A more diverse gut microbiome is linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, and severe COVID. So by promoting bacterial diversity, beer may help prevent these outcomes, the study suggests. The findings stand out amid increasing evidence that no level of alcohol, even in small or moderate amounts, is good for you. This study indicates that a once-daily beer may benefit the gut microbiome regardless of its alcohol content, though nonalcoholic beer may still be the healthier choice.
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@vatan In this double-blind trial, 22 healthy men ages 23 to 58 were randomly split into two groups. One group drank 11 ounces of nonalcoholic lager every day for four weeks, while the other drank lager with 5.2% alcohol (comparable to Budweiser). At the end of the four weeks, analyses of blood and fecal samples revealed an increase in more than 20 types of helpful bacteria in the men's digestive tracts in both groups. Neither group saw significant changes in body weight, body fat, or cardiometabolic biomarkers such as blood sugar or LDL cholesterol, the researchers report.