That’s right, that wonderful strong smelling green stuff that helps keep your beer from going bad and gives it some great bitterness, flavour and aroma to boot may also be able to help against metabolic syndrome.
Published ahead of print on the website of the journal Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, the authors from the US fed mice a high fat diet with and without the addition of Xanthohumol (XN), a flavanol from hops. Previous research from them in rats had suggested that XN could be used to treat metabolic syndrome.
According to the paper metabolic syndrome is defined when you suffer from “three or more of these conditions: abdominal obesity, atherogenic dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and/or impaired glucose tolerance, hypertension, pro-inflammatory state, and prothrombotic state”.
And the results? There were significant improvements in a number of conditions such as cholesterol, weight gain and insulin levels.
Unfortunately, looking at numbers available in the literature, the highest amount of XN measured in a in beer was 13mg/l. If the rats were given 60 mg/kg body weight, then a rather average man of 80kg (a bit more than 12 and a half stone) would need to consume nearly 370 litres of this beer per day. Somehow I think at those levels metabolic syndrome might be the least of his troubles.
Still, I am sure it could be taken as a concentrated extract, or perhaps a fortified beer?