Beer Has The Ability To Make You Feel Good Says Research

If you’re a beer lover then here’s a good news for you – beer has components that stimulates a feel good factor in your brain according to a recent finding. The scientists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) took up to examining 13,000 food components that could stimulate this feeling and found an important one present in beer.

The Study

Different foods can stimulate the dopamine levels. The ones that manage to activate the dopamine D2 receptor leave us feeling good after consuming it. In the case of this study the 13,000 molecules present in food were analysed to fit the dopamine D2 receptor. Out of these 17 were chosen for final analysis.

How Does Beer Make Us Feel Good

Hordenine is a substance present in malt beer and barley and this substance showed the highest level of ability to activate dopamine receptor. ‘It came as a bit of surprise that a substance in beer activates the dopamine D2 receptor, especially as we were not specifically looking at stimulant foodstuffs,’ explains Prof. Dr. Monika Pischetsrieder to Science Insider.

Further according to the study, hordenine uses a different signalling pathway to stimulate the dopamine receptor which is through G proteins. This leaves a prolonged effect on the reward centre of the brain and the team is analysing further to see if the hordenine levels in beer are sufficient to have a significant impact on the reward centre.