Does beer make a person happier and friendlier?

In the coming weekend, pour yourself a glass of beer and drink to the health of Swiss researchers who offer scientific proof of what you, of course, knew about earlier, and what you probably hoped for.

Beer Lover: friendly and happy

Beer really makes you friendlier, happier and maybe even sexier, scientists say. But that is not all.

"We found that just a glass of beer can help people see happy faces faster and increase their interest in positive situations," said Matthias Lichti, head of research in psychopharmacology at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland.

This means that beer can make you more social and sensitive.

Features of the study

Researchers came to such surprising conclusions after studying 30 men and the same number of women. Scientists divided the participants into two equal groups. Half of the participants had to drink a sufficient amount of beer to increase the level of alcohol in their blood to 0.4 grams per liter. The rest of the participants drank a non-alcoholic drink.

Before and after drinking beer, a group of volunteers had to perform various tasks, including such as face recognition, and testing their empathy and sexual arousal. Then both groups exchanged roles and repeated the tests.

results

The researchers found that people are more likely to communicate with each other after a glass or two. This is especially true for women and those volunteers who were more inhibited socially.

Drinking beer also made it easier for some people, especially women, to view sexually explicit images. The results were published in the journal "Psychopharmacology". They were also presented at the annual meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) in Vienna (Austria).

Comment of the scientist

"This interesting study confirms the generally accepted view that alcohol acts as a" social lubricant "and that its moderate use makes people happy, less inhibited when it comes to sexual involvement, and more social," said Dr. Wim van den Brink , Former head of the Scientific Committee at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Although he was not involved in the study, van den Brink proposed several theories as to why alcohol affects men and women in different ways. Differences can result from unequal levels of alcohol content after consuming the same amount of beer or because of socio-cultural factors, the scientist expressed his own assumption.

"It should also be recognized that the different effects of alcohol can be considered depending on whether its quantity in the blood increases or decreases, and, of course, how much you have drunk in total," he said in a press release issued by ECNP.

Nevertheless, van den Brink said that people's emotions may not reflect their real behavior when they are under the influence of alcohol. As Shakespeare noted in his Macbeth tragedy, "it causes desire, but takes away productivity."