“Naughty Drink” GUARDS Your Heart

When it comes to the top health elixirs, drinks like water, wine, coffee, and tea probably come to mind—and for good reason.

These drinks have studies showing how they can help with everything from bone health to weight loss to fighting cancer.

Well, it’s time to add another beverage to that list—one that most people would never think of as a health drink.

Because a recent study shows that having one daily glass of this “naughty drink” could dramatically lower your risk of developing heart disease.

Plenty of studies have been done on the health benefits of wine… but what about beer?

I enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner, but sometimes an iced-cold beer hits the spot. If that’s true for you as well, I’ve got great news for you today.

Researchers studied 80,000 people to determine the impact of alcohol on HDL—aka, “good cholesterol.”

HDL is considered good because it lowers your risk of heart disease by removing LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and transporting LDL to the liver where it can be reprocessed.

The problem is that as you get older, HDL numbers gradually decline—and people with low HDL tend to have a greater risk of developing heart disease.

In this study, the researchers found the HDL numbers decreased the SLOWEST in people who drank moderate amounts of beer.

This was defined as one drink per day for women, and two per day for men.

There’s good news for hard liquor drinkers as well. Light to moderate drinking also slowed the decline in HDL (but not as much as drinking beer).

This was defined as 1 drink per day for men, and .4 for women.

Add to this study previous studies showing the heart-healthy benefits of drinking wine, and the takeaway is clear:

Whatever your drink of choice, drinking it in moderate amounts is great for your heart.

Bottom’s up!