A new study has found that drinking pale ale instead of lager might be more healthy in keeping you liver healthy.
The study found that hops protect against the build up of hepatic fat, which is a way of explaining why people who tend to drink spirits are more likely to suffer from liver disease, rather than those who stick to beer, and beer with hops was found to be the best of them all.
The main danger of drinking, and the min reason that heavy drinkers develop liver disease is due to the accumulation of fat in the liver. In the study, mice were fed beer, beer with hops and pure ethanol to find out how the different types of alcohol affects the liver.
The mice were examined twelve hours after being given their specific type of alcohol. They discovered that the mice which were given either ethanol or hop-less beer had similar amounts of fat in their livers, while those that had been given beer with hops had much less fat stored in the liver. Their results were published in the journalAlcohol and Alcoholism.
From the study the researchers concluded that hops are the ingredient which protect against the accumulation of liver fat, which they concluded is part of the reason as to why spirit-drinkers are usually the ones who develop worse problems stemming from their drinking, rather than beer drinkers.
Additionally, they also discovered that the livers of mice that drank normal beer suffered much less damage because of a process called oxidative stress, which has hinted that hops may have an antioxidant effect.
Although it is yet unclear as to how it happens, levels of an enzyme called inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) were found to be lower in the beer-fed mice than those fed on either ethanol or beer without hops.
It is suspected that the presence of this enzyme has a positive effect on the overall health of the liver.
