Stutter Milk, Distillate of Dreamtime, The Sweet Tonic of Olde... No, I'm not talking about fancy names for cocktails, I'm talking about alcohol in general. The "noble experiment" of 1920-1933, also known as prohibition, did not stop anyone from drinking, and in fact, people are projected to have been drinking for over 3,000 years.
Drinking is a huge part of society, especially for a college student. Recently, a friend on facebook posted an article entitled 24 Things You Didn't Know About Beer by WearYourBeer.com. Many facts in the article seemed like a lot of silliness; some of the historical facts on beer seemed a little questionable and alcohol was praised a couple times for some of its health benefits.
Health In Your Daily Living by Rathbone, Bacon, and Keene (RBK) published in 1948 also present a chapter on alcohol. The first line is "alcohol as a narcotic and poison" so I don't think that RBK share the same view of beer as WearYourBeer.com. That being said, I did a little dig into the literature to determine which claims were correct.
I didn't bother to verify the historical and social beer facts, but some of the more interesting ones included "cenosillicaphobia" which is fear of an empty beer class; the first professional beer brewers were all women; and a quote from Benjamin Franklin, "Beer is proof that god loves us."
That being said, one of the questionable health facts included that beer prevents kidney stones. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology entitled Nutrient Intake and Use of Beverages and the Risk of Kidney Stones in Male Smokers (Hirvonen et al., 1999) found that beer consumption was inversely proportional with risk of kidney stones, and that every beer consumed per day was estimated to reduce risk of kidney stones by 40%. Magnesium intake was also inversely proportion with risk of kidney stones. The study refers to alcohol's suppression of excretion of vasopressin, which results in increased urine flow and more dilute urine, as a possible reason for decreased risk of kidney stones in alcohol drinkers.
The study by Hirvonen et al. also referenced another health claim from the WearYourBeer.com page; that beer strengthens your bones. Apparently, xanthohumol and humulone, active components in hops (the plant that beer is made of), have been shown to inhibit bone resorption, which could slow the release of calcium from bone and reduce calcium excretion, which in turn would "strengthen" bones, or at least decrease their weakening. I did not look into this study specifically, but it is cited in the kidney stone article.
Hirvonen et al.'s study has some major flaws, one of which is that it only sampled male smokers over the age of 50, so this population may have other habits that could reduce the risk of kidney stones other than beer consumption.
With this study in mind, I do not endorse the use of alcohol only as a preventative measure for kidney stones, nor as a substitute for calcium to aid in bone health. The negative effects of alcohol are probably a lot more detrimental than the potential to decrease risk of kidney stones and increase bone mass.
RBK mention many of the negative health effects of alcohol: that it deadens nerves; heavy drinkers tend to accumulate more fat, especially around the heart, liver, and kidneys; inhibits motor and cognitive functions when consumed in large amounts; and the rate of alcoholics; and increased risk of alcoholism with heavy drinking. I also note some other, more recently developed long term negative effects of drinking, such as liver disease, chronic pancreitis, fetal alcohol syndrome, Korsakoff syndrome (a thiamine deficiency), tremors, insomnia, and depressive disorders.
Cheers!
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