July Health benefit from drinking beer part 2

To continue with what health benefits there are with drinking beer, remember that this is about how it is viewed in a historic manner and not with modern beer. The difference, as I pointed out earlier, is that modern beer have a lot higher alcohol content compared to medieval ones. That taken into account, looking at communities in medieval Europe that did comsume germinated seed (which is part of making beer) were healthier than those that did not. One reason for that is most likely due to the fact that the vitamins that appears and increase in volume during germination of the seeds, and thus likely to be found in beer,
are most notably, water-soluble B-group vitamins such as riboflavin, niacin and folic acid. Now these also get reduced during boiling, folate acid is reduced by 60% for example, the amount is still a lot larger compared to pure barley. Riboflavin gets doubled during germination, niacin is about the same but then it hardly decreases during boiling.

These increases are enough, given the amount of beer being drunk per day, to have a medical significance. Folate acid helps decreasing the risk of cardiovascular conditions such as heart attack and cancer (most notably of the colon and cervis). Reason for that is that the main role is to carry one-carbon transfer throughout the body which is essential for cell division due to the fact that it helps with synthesis of DNA and protiens. In modern world, women who have enough of this in their bodies run less risk of congenital defects during pregnancy.

Niacin helps with controlling the level of cholesterol in the body, which is something we know today is a good thing to keep in check. It also helps reducing hardening of the arteries for some people. Some studies also suggest that it can lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease and type 1 diabetes. During medieval times, if you did start to suffer from these conditions there were no treatment which meant that avoiding them is vital.

Riboflavin is a major player for metabolism of proteins and carbohydrates and also for production of fresh red blood cells. Having enough red blood cells is vital to oxygenation of the body and being able to keep up with the hardship of working with your body the entire day, which most people did at the time.

As we can see these vitamins play a vital role in being able to keep the human body functioning, and thus beer did aid in that. So what part did beer play in the medieval society as a health benefactor? Well, of course you could get your vitamins elsewhere but every opportunity you had to get your hands on what your body need you had to take it. So communities that did drink beer had a higher chance of being healthy and living longer, which made the community as a whole stronger.