Beer made me remember to write this post!

Wow, I just realized that I haven’t written a post today. No time. I am too exhausted by politics to have anything to say, and I’m delighted that M. Simon has taken up the slack.

I noticed an interesting study, though. There have been many claims made about a connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s. I’m skeptical, if only because there’s a little too much alliteration there for comfort.

However, the study that caught my limited and diminishing attention span involved beer.

In a three-day study, male mice were subjected to acute exposure to aluminium while being given two types of beer, i.e., alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer, to drink at two intake levels, one equivalent to moderate to low consumption in humans (0.5 l/d; 27.5 g alcohol/d) and another equivalent to moderate to high consumption in humans (1 l/d; 55 g alcohol/day). Aluminium and silicon were determined by ICP-MS and ICP-OES, respectively.

RESULTS:

The results obtained seem indicate that at moderately high levels of alcoholic beer intake the silicon present in the beer was able to reduce aluminium uptake in the digestive tract, increasing its excretion by faecal route. In addition, a possible interaction of both elements at level of distribution and renal excretion is suggested.

CONCLUSION:

In consequence, moderate beer consumption, possibly affording a protective factor for the toxic effect of aluminium, one of the environmental factors for Alzheimer’s disease.

Hmm… That might be a good argument for drinking beer.

In bottles, though.

(I guess you could also argue that drinking canned beer is a neutral proposition, because of the aluminum offsets…)