Take heart - and have a beer

First it was red wine, hot chocolate, coffee and even a tipple of cider – according to scientists, a little of each of these could do you good. Now another ostensibly unhealthy brew has been redeemed: beer.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School in the US have discovered that a few glasses of beer every week reduces the risk of hyper-tension, the disorder that causes high blood pressure, heart attacks and convulsions in pregnancy. And, rather than recruiting platoons of beer-bellied barflies, their findings were based on a study of more than 70,000 female nurses who are taking part in one of the world's most extensive and longest-running studies into serious illness.

The Nurses' Health Study, which was originally set up in 1976 to investigate the effects of oral contraceptives, found that women who drank about half a pint of beer every few days were at lower risk of hypertension than non-drinkers.

Beer now joins red wine as one of the beverages which has anti-oxidants that reduce cholesterol, and reputedly soak up damaging free radicals and trace elements, which are good for the body.

But the good news ends there. The study confirmed that heavier drinking, involving more than a pint of beer every day, increased the risk of hypertension. That risk increased by 30 per cent for women who drank two or more pints a day.