Every fall, as Oktoberfest and other autumnal celebrations ramp up, beer enters the spotlight. In recent years, scientists have increasingly focused on the beverage too, because one of its main ingredients—hops—turns out to have a wide range of health-promoting properties.
When it comes to beer and health, “hops are the star of the show,” says Glen Fox, a professor of beer-brewing science at the University of California, Davis. Dozens of laboratory and animal studies and a few small ones in people make clear that hops compounds have an impressive array of antimicrobial, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, and blood-sugar regulating properties, leading experts to explore the plant’s potential for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems, and even cancer.
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Hops (Humulus lupulus, a member of the hemp family) derives most of its beneficial reputation from the thousands of healthful antioxidants naturally found in the cone of the female plant, the part used in beer. Antioxidants regulate inflammation and protect cells from damage and comprise some 14 percent of the plant. Two types of promising antioxidants in hops, bitter acids and polyphenols, also give beer its flavor and aroma. Researchers are especially interested in a polyphenol called xanthohumol (the first syllable is pronounced “zan,” with the accent on syllable three), a powerful antioxidant that’s found only in hops.
“People who drink beer in moderation, can feel confident they’re doing their health a favor,” Fox says. “And I think non-alcoholic beer should be considered a health drink.”
But before you belly up to the bar, know that the quantity of xanthohumol is miniscule in many beers. And the health risks of alcohol, which range from heart disease and cancer to liver issues and immune system dysfunction, should not be dismissed.
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Hops has a long history in beer
Beermaking got its start with agriculture. Around 12,000 years ago, humans transitioned from a nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering to agrarian societies where they began growing the grains that are the beverage’s foundation—wheat, sorghum, barley, or corn, depending on the location.
Early on people discovered that when rain wet the grains, the beverage transformed. “Back then they didn’t understand that wild yeast had settled on the liquid and caused a fermentation process, converting the sugars to alcohol,” Fox says. What they did know: “Drinking the brew made them feel happier.”
Once humans figured out how to control fermentation, beer quickly became one of the most popular beverages on the planet. Still, grains, yeast, and water don’t yield much flavor or aroma, plus people needed a way to keep the beverage from spoiling. To address this, different societies added various plant materials, known collectively as gruit (German for herbs). Around a millennium ago in the Roman Empire, people were already using hops to slow food spoilage and turned to the plant as their the primary gruit.
Hops’ bitter taste—derived from acids released during the boiling process—balances the grains’ sweetness. The plant’s distinctive color and its floral and fruity aromas added to its appeal. These factors eventually made hops the go-to gruit across Europe and, later, the United States.
“Everything you like in beer comes from the hops,” says Zugravu Corina-Aurelia, a physician and researcher at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania, who concluded in a published review of hops research that it holds great potential for preventing and treating a wide range of medical diseases.
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Mostly laboratory research
So far, most of the research on hops and its constituent parts has been limited to laboratory cells and rodents, but the results have largely been positive. This is especially the case for the most widely studied components, xanthohumol and hops’ bitter acids.
Feeding xanthohumol to obese male rats along with their chow lowers blood glucose levels; the higher the dose, the larger the effect. Adding a mixture of hops’ antioxidants to lipid cells prevents the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol from oxidizing, blunting its damage. And giving obese rats xanthohumol with a high-fat diet avoids the increases in unhealthy triglyceride blood fats and weight gain they otherwise see.
Xanthohumol has also been found to impact cancer cells, including those for lung, colon, thyroid, and ovarian cancers. The cells kill themselves in its presence or don’t replicate or metastasize. “We see intervention in many steps of the cancer process,” Corina-Aurelia says.
Whether these results will translate to people remains an open question. Thankfully, one barrier researchers feared from preliminary research turns out not to be an issue in humans: whether the compounds survive past the stomach after oral consumption. Subsequent studies confirm that roughly a third of the chemical does enter the blood. “It turns out it is absorbed very well,” says Jan Frederik Stevens, a pharmaceutical scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis who conducted the later absorption studies as well as dozens of others.
Small human studies hint at potential benefits
So far, the few human studies that exist have increased interest in hops compounds. When some 90 prediabetic people in Japan took either a daily supplement comprised of hops’ bitter acids or a placebo for three months, the hops group reduced fasting blood glucose and A1C (a longer-term measure of blood sugar), while levels in the placebo group remained steady.
And xanthohumol has shown promise in supplementing other treatments. During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers gave 50 patients hospitalized with acute respiratory failure either a high-dose extract (1.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight three times a day) or a placebo, along with their regular treatment. After one week, those on the supplement spent less time on a ventilator and had better prognoses.
Another intriguing research area for xanthohumol involves inflammatory bowel diseases, including Crohn’s. The body doesn’t eliminate the compound through urine but instead mixes it with bile in the digestive tract before excreting it in the stools. “Because it is recirculated through the bile, that led to the hypothesis it might have direct activity in the bowels,” says Ryan Bradley, a senior investigator at the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon.
Numerous studies in mice bear out this assumption, so Bradley and Stevens decided it was time to test the prospect in people. Their pilot study suggested that a high dose (24 milligrams daily) of pharmaceutical-grade xanthohumol for eight weeks is safe for people. The team has since tested the pills in 20 people with Crohn’s disease and are currently analyzing the results.
Additional studies of hops’ compounds for a variety of medical conditions are expected in the next few years. One potential hinderance may be getting a sufficient supply. “The U.S. brewing industry uses all the hops grown each year for beer, with very little surplus,” Fox says.
Look for low or no alcohol
Of course, taking a pill and downing a few pints of beer are hardly the same. For one thing, the hops-forward microbrewery beers containing the highest amounts of xanthohumol have just four or five milligrams per liter, while national brands and less hoppy brews like lagers contain even less. “Drinking a liter of beer is not nearly enough to get the same effects as in our studies,” Bradley says.
Some hops growers are working to breed plants containing higher levels of their polyphenols, and beer manufacturers are experimenting with alternative brewing processes that might maintain more in the final glass.
These efforts may prove more valuable for general health promotion than the supplements with xanthohumol and other polyphenols already appearing in health food stores, Corina-Aurelia says. (Current offerings generally have low or indeterminate levels of the polyphenols, Stevens cautions.) “The paradox regarding alcohol is a lot of the healthy ingredients in beer are more easily absorbed in the presence of alcohol,” Corina-Aurelia says.
It’s a paradox, of course, because of the harms that come from drinking. That’s why Corina-Aurelia suggests seeking out beers with a low alcohol concentration and drinking no more than a few times in a week.
“Like sugar or fat or anything else,” Corina-Aurelia says, “when it comes to beer, it’s the dose that makes the poison.” Or try non-alcohol varieties, at least sometimes. “Unlike alcohol-free wines,” she says, “these actually taste quite nice.”
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