Drink To Your Health?

It's a confusing time for health-minded imbibers, as several conflicting studies about the health-related implications of beer drinking were recently released.

The good news first: Researchers at Granada University in Spain have decided that beer is the best possible post-workout refresher. Forget sports drinks or plain old water, according to the researchers, the carbon dioxide in beer helps quench the thirst more quickly than other beverages, while beer's carbohydrates replace calories lost during physical exertion.

The bad news: A new study from the Catalan Institute of Oncology, also in Spain, claims that drinking three glasses of beer daily for a number of years increases the risk of gastric cancer by 75 percent. And that's not even their worst finding: for those who have a gene variant called rs1230025, that risk goes up by a staggering 700 percent. A sliver of good news there; the study found that wine and spirits had no particular effect on gastric cancer rates.

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Do these studies make you think twice about your beer drinking habits? Let us know in the comments.