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South America
Special Section
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 Beer — It Does a Body Good
By Jim Shahin
IF YOU'RE ANYTHING LIKE ME, which is to say overweight and slothful, then you had to be happy about the news coming out of the health sciences this summer.
First of all, let me say that I try to stay as far away as I can from the health sciences. I don’t even know precisely what the health sciences are. For all I know, I am making up the phrase.
What I do know is that there is health and there is science, and, taken together, they are a horror movie. If one of my eyes should happen to land, like a wayward fly, on a headline with the word exercise or diet in it, I immediately divert my attention to something a bit more uplifting, like the price of gas.
Yet for those of us who disbelieve scientific studies in the expectation that they will be reversed in a few years anyway, ignore medical advice when disbelief no longer works, and procrastinate when ignorance fails, here, finally, is some good news. Researchers have discovered that disbelief, ignorance, and procrastination help a body fight cancer and live a longer, happier life.
Take, for example, the study that showed the English are healthier than Americans.
The English?!
The news was met with an audible intercontinental gasp.
The English?! Healthier than Americans?
As a report on National Public Radio put it: “A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association comes to a conclusion that has surprised even the researchers who conducted it.” It went on to say that a researcher on the study, Michael Marmot of University College in London, was “astonished” by the results. “It was a bit of a big shock,” he was quoted as saying.
One thing about the English is that they have a way of constantly being underestimated. Even the way they talk, with that singsongy accent of theirs that makes them seem so quaint. I used to wonder if the English really talked that way or if they just put that accent on to make themselves seem smarter than everybody else. Something about their overenunciation makes even the dumbest Englishman seem smarter than, say, a Harvard-educated American. (Have you noticed, by the way, how some Ivy Leaguers take on the faintest lilt of an English accent?) But I have come to believe that the English really do talk like that. How else do you explain their achievements? Shakespeare? A onetime global empire? Their ability to win World War II (granted, America helped — a lot)? Still, when people think of fierce warriors, they think of the Vikings or of barbarians. Big guys. Marauding types. Their imaginations don’t turn to, well, the English.
Clearly, then, the English are smarter than Americans. And one thing they figured out is that hanging out playing electric guitar is more healthful than going to the gym.
This can be viewed as nothing but good news, especially coming on the heels of the reports from a few years ago that the French, too, are healthier than Americans. Somehow, all that wine drinking works more wonders for a body than all of that American dieting.
The inescapable conclusion, then, is that hanging out and drinking is healthier than diet and exercise.
If more proof of this obvious truth is required, another scientific report provides it in the conclusion that cancer prevention is found in beer.
“Oregon State University researchers said a key ingredient in beer may help prevent prostate cancer and enlargement,” reads an Associated Press article. “The scientists report hops has a compound that inhibits cancer development.”
Nitpickers note that the researchers concluded that a person would have to drink 17 beers to get any benefit. To which I reply, So, you say that as if it were a bad thing.
Clearly, this is a win-win. The more beer you drink, the healthier you get. What’s the downside?
Okay, I’m messin’ with ya. I know there is a downside to all that beer swilling, and it is that too much beer makes you sleepy — which means you can’t drink more beer and get yet more health benefits.
Researchers worked hard on that problem and came up with a solution: coffee. According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, caffeine may actually help reduce your chances of getting diabetes. So, not only will coffee help you stay awake to drink more beer, but it also has the additional benefit of being a health drink in its own right.
The way I figure it, if Americans start drinking a lot of beer and coffee, they will be as healthy as the English in no time. It’s all just a matter of carefully following the advice of the health sciences.
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