Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/oX2wWh2bKL0   Drinking 11 ounces of beer a day for a month significantly improves the diversity of gastrointestinal bacteria in men.  Portuguese researchers report this finding following their pilot study of 19 healthy men.   Half the group drank beer with 5.2.% alcohol and the other half consumed non-alcoholic beer.  Both groups enjoyed a beneficial increase in gut bacterial diversity as well as better intestinal barrier function.  And both groups of men failed to increase their body weights, fat masses, or adverse cardiometabolic indicators.   Beer, alcoholic or not, contains polyphenols as well as microorganisms as by products of the fermentation process.  Polyphenols, also found in plant foods including fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, tea, dark chocolate, and wine, are antioxidants that block cell damaging and mutating effects of free radicals. So ingesting polyphenols is beneficial.  Do so by consuming the foods that contain them.   https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jaf