New research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that people who enjoy a glass or two of wine or beer every day could be helping to keep their bones strong.

According to Dr. Katherine Tucker of Tufts University in Boston that by drinking more and choosing hard liquor instead of wine or beer may actually weaken bones. Nevertheless, the researcher added, the effect of alcohol on bone mineral density (BMD) that she and her colleagues saw was “larger than what we see for any single nutrient, even for calcium. It’s not ambiguous. It’s very clear.”

Men who had a glass or two of wine or beer daily had denser bones than non-drinkers, the researchers found, but those who downed two or more servings of hard liquor a day had significantly lower BMD than the men who drank up to two glasses of liquor daily.

Beer is an excellent source of silicon, a mineral needed for bone health that has become increasingly rare in the modern diet, the researcher noted. Beer and wine may be better for people than liquor because they contain potentially beneficial plant substances such as resveratrol, while hard liquor has had most natural substances distilled out of it, Dr. Tucker said.

“The main message here is that if you are drinking up to one or two glasses of wine or beer a day, you don’t need to stop for your bones’ sake, in fact it’s helpful,” the researcher said. “It’s a personal decision.”

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online February 25, 2009 via http://www.health.am