Drink-a-Pint

This sort of feels like a rum and coke, a bit of an upper and a downer.

First, the good news: A study from the University of California-Davis, found small amounts of beer helped men and women decrease their risk of heart attack and stroke by nearly 40 percent. The reason? Like red wine, small amounts of beer increase the body’s levels of HDL, or good cholesterol, and lessens the risk of a blood clot forming inside an artery in the heart.

And, the bad news: Beer guts linked to dementia. Results of a new study conducted by Kaiser Permanente shows that having a big belly in middle age appears to greatly increase one’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia decades later. Their study tracked 6583 people in northern California for an average of 36 years starting when they were ages 40 to 45. Their abdominal size was measured at the outset of the study. A total of 1049 of them - nearly 16 percent - went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease or some other form of dementia by the time they reached their 70s. Those in the upper 20 percent in terms of belly size in middle age were almost three times more likely to develop dementia than those in the bottom 20 percent of belly size, the researchers found.

So, drinking beer will decrease your chances of having a heart attack to help you live longer and forget more as you get older? Hmm… I’ll concentrate on the first part for now and hope there’s a better study later that contradicts the second part before I forget what it is.