Hailing from the same family as marijuana plants, extracts from hops have previously been proven to work as an anti-inflammatory, weight loss supplement and sleep aid.
While the latter finding isn’t that surprising considering hops are a main ingredient in beer, the first two are a bit unexpected. Which bings us to a third: according to the results of a study that was conducted by Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in Germany and published in Alcohol and Alcoholism, the consumption of hoppy beer leads to less fatty buildup in the liver than the ingestion of beers without hops and ethanol.
For IPA fans, that’s the good news.
The bad news? The study was conducted on female mice.
That said, we’ll hold out hope this finding will soon apply to humans of both sexes. “Taken together, our data suggest that hops in beer markedly attenuated acute alcohol-induced liver steatosis in female mice,” the researchers wrote. “Our data suggest that hops content in beer is at least in part responsible for the less damaging effects of beer on the liver.”
Don’t worry, be hoppy.
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