Strawberries protect against alcohol

A little alcohol can be a fine thing. This is a secret that has been discovered by societies and cultures around the world and across the millennia. Everything from grapes to rice to potatoes to juniper berries to wheat has been used as a basis for making alcoholic beverages. If it’s got sugar in it then it has probably been fermented somewhere, sometime. Now the news is that one of those sugary foods, the strawberry, may actually reduce some of the damage that those alcoholic drinks do.

Alcohol might leave you feeling pleasantly at peace with the world when consumed in moderation, but your stomach won’t be having such a good time of it. Alcohol actually irritates rhe stomach lining and causes inflammation that can lead to ulcers. Since the brain clearly outranks the stomach, if the decision to eat offal is anything to go by, the stomach just has to get on with things, but in the long run the damage can be significant.

In a new study, researchers gave strawberry extract to rats at the rate of 40 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight for ten days. Other rates were not given the strawberries. After ten days the rats were given alcohol in their drinking water.

Those rats who had been given strawberry extract suffered significantly less damage to the stomach lining than did other rats. The belief is that this is due to high levels of antioxidant phenols found in strawberries and the fact that they also stimulate the body’s own antioxidant enzymes.

Of course, inflammation of the stomach lining is not only caused by alcohol. Viruses and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications can also damage the stomach. So strawberries may be able to be used to protect against all sorts of damaging agents and help prevent stomach ulcers.

It is important to note though, that while strawberries will protect the stomach lining, they will not stop, or slow, you getting drunk.

It’s quite clear then folks, from a purely medicinal point of view, it’s strawberry daiquiris all round!