Lower Your Cholesterol With Beer

Posted by Angie Rayfield Mar 14, 2008

In a word, yes. And the word is hops.

Hops are a rather plain looking flower that grow on long, twining bines (yes, bines, not vines). They've been added to beer for hundreds of years, in part for their flavor, and in part for their preservative affect. Hops have also long been used in folk medicine in treating a variety of ailments, including anxiety and insomnia.

Now there's some proof that they're good for us, according to a study done among Cistercian nuns in Spain. For 45 days, the normally teetotaling nuns drank a pint of beer daily. They returned to their normal habits for six months, then took an herbal supplement of hops for 40 days. The end result was a 6% reduction in total cholesterol levels in the nuns that suffered from elevated cholesterol.

There's no reason to believe that consuming more than a daily pint will result in more dramatic results - moderation is still the best plan. And the beer doesn't need to contain alcohol - the necessary ingredient is the hops.

This might be a great time for an IPA, don't you think?