Beer is one of life’s greatest gifts to humanity. It’s the liquid courage we need when we want a little boost of confidence and our best companion when we need a drink to forget, to celebrate, or deal with whatever it is that’s going on in our lives. Beer will always be there for us through thick and thin, indeed.
Even in life-threatening situations, beer can also be used to save us from the brink of death. Just like the case of a man who suffered from alcohol poisoning. According to Vice, Nguyen Van Nhat, 48, was rushed to Quang Tri General Hospital in Vietnam on Christmas after allegedly consuming alcoholic drinks that contained methanol—a highly toxic form of alcohol that may even cause death in large doses. Doctors immediately gave Nhat three cans of beer to slow down the rate at which his liver was processing methanol.
Methanol is the simplest form yet a non-drinking type of alcohol (also known as wood alcohol or methyl alcohol) and is mostly used to create fuel, solvents, and antifreeze. Like ethanol (drinking alcohol), it is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable liquid but is far more toxic and can cause serious health problems when consumed. Methanol is formed in very small amounts during the fermentation process of alcohol and is also inadvertently produced in home distillation of spirits like gin or rum.
Beer was used to help save Nhat because there’s ethanol in beer and the human liver prioritizes breaking down ethanol over methanol. According to Le Van Lam, head of the hospital’s intensive care unit, the doctors administered beer to buy some time before performing dialysis and to flush out the alcohol before the methanol is processed in the patient’s system. Nhat was reportedly given one can of beer every hour and used up to 15 cans that made him recover and was able to get discharged from the hospital.
Over the years, beer has been used for medicinal purposes. There have also been numerous studies which show surprising health benefits of drinking beer such as: it reduces incidence of heart attacks, can cut the risk of strokes, decreases the chance of diabetes, and might even cure cancer.
Beer is life, beer saves lives! (Just drink moderately though and don’t ever drink and drive.)