"Study: Main Ingredient Found In Beer Can Help Improve Memory"

It's all in the hops.

by Ken

I wouldn't want to suggest that the only items my friend and former coworker Paul passes along are beer-related. He covers the field from left-wing politics to pop music to late-night TV talkers to great Shorpy photos of 20th-century America. But let's just say that when Paul does pass along a beer-related item, I doubt that anyone on his distribution list is surprised.

And this head: "Study: Main Ingredient Found In Beer Can Help Improve Memory"! I can just see Paul's face light up when he glommed onto that one! But by the time he did his e-pass-along, he had been into the guts of the story, and prefaced it in his e-mail with this disclaimer:

((NOTE: Read that last sentence!!! - Paul)

And he highlighted in yellow both this line and "that last sentence." So I've done the same, to help you keep that stipulation in mind -- you know, about the last line -- as you read this otherwise-upbeat story. (Note: links onsite.)

Study: Main Ingredient Found In Beer Can Help Improve Memory

September 30, 2014 5:37 PM

CORVALLIS, Oregon (CBS Seattle) – Beer is better for the brain than you might believe. A new study finds the frothy beverage can improve memory.

A researcher at Oregon State Universtity points to a compound found in hops, one of the main ingredients in beer, improved cognitive function in a group of mice.

The mice were given large doses of xanthohumol, a flavinoid found in hops. Flavonoids are compounds found in plants that often give them their color.

Then the mice were run through a special maze to determine whether they showed signs of improved spacial memory and cognitive flexibility.

“Xanthohumol can speed the metabolism, reduce fatty acids in the liver and, at least with young mice, appeared to improve their cognitive flexibility, or higher level thinking,” reported Daniel Zamzow, with the University of Wisconsin. “Unfortunately it did not reduce palmitoylation in older mice, or improve their learning or cognitive performance, at least in the amounts of the compound we gave them.”

Lead study author Kathy Magnassun, a professor in the OSU Department of Biomedical Sciences, concludes the results suggest the diets of children can have an impact throughout their lives.

“This flavonoid and others may have a function in the optimal ability to form memories,” Magnusson suggested. “Part of what this study seems to be suggesting is that it’s important to begin early in life to gain the full benefits of healthy nutrition.”

The researchers point out that they gave the mice huge quantities of xanthohumol as dietary supplements and caution people shouldn’t start drinking lots of beer to improve their memories.

“A human would have to drink 2000 liters of beer a day to reach the xanthohumol levels we used in this research,” warned Magnussun.

The study is published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research.

At first I was thinking this study must have involved some really potted mice, but then I went back and got it clear in my head that the mice were only given the xanthohumol, the flavinoid in hops, and not little mouse-size pitchers of beer. At least the younger mice were able to perform those prodigious feats in the maze; for the older mice, the day must have been a total wipeout.

As for those 2000 liters of beer a day, a had a roommate my freshman year in college . . . nah, I don't think even he could have managed a quantity like that.

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