At first I thought I dreamed

Published 5:13 pm Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Have you ever wondered if you dreamed something or did you actually hear it or see it?

It happened to me today. And since I have a lot of weird dreams, I was leaning heavily on the possibility that it all happened in my subconscious.

I thought I heard someone say there was a study that suggests that drinking beer could make you smarter. I figured that might have been involved in that dream where I’m fishing from a bathtub and catching rubber bass.

So I went to Google. My gosh! Back in 2012 and again in 2013 there were reports of studies that did suggest that drinking beer makes you smarter.

So now I know what I might do when I retire from newspapering. And no, I’m not going to get really, really smart. I’m considering going into research.

Apparently, research doesn’t have to produce earth-shattering results or even useable information. It can produce off-the wall conclusions or just state the obvious.

My thoughts that research must be easy is further backed up by an earlier study where someone discovered that kids tend to get fat if they sit on their behinds all day playing video games instead of being involved in some kind of physical activity. You see what I mean by stating the obvious?

I could even build on that research. I mean why re-invent the wheel? My study would show that there would be a tendency for the offspring of these kids to embrace that same environment as an accepted protocol in the process we know as life. That’s a fancy way of saying they would also be obese. You’ve got to have some fancy talk in research or it will look too simple. You don’t want everyone doing research. Somebody has to build cars and trolling motors.

Researchers at Oregon State University suggested that a compound found in one of the main ingredients of beer can actually improve cognitive function. They discovered that doses of xanthohumol, a flavonoid found in hops, improved memory and thinking in a group of mice.

So now let’s have a study on how many people can pronounce “xanthohumol” after or even before a few beers? And has it ever been used in a spelling bee?

But now here’s the catch.

Xanthohumol is a rare chemical compound. Hops are the only known dietary source of it. And it would require drinking 2,000 liters of beer a day (or 5,636 bottles of beer) to ingest the amount of xanthohumol used in the study.

Now I have a flashback to my college days and remember a couple of guys who were so very close to becoming downright geniuses. Someone once said there’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

So when all is said, a couple of rednecks won’t have a couple of Buds and prove “string theory.” They might get into an argument over whether the string is cotton or nylon, but they won’t make the cover of “Physics Monthly.”

Now I know someone is going to think that after all those years of putting mice through horrible experiments, they finally got all the beer they could drink. But no, the project was not even close to being poetic. They were just fed xanthohumol supplements. No kegs.

And from a sociological perspective, here’s the downside of that research. The younger mice got smarter but it didn’t work on the older mice. This information could be really dangerous in the hands of teenagers. They might take it out of context.

Meanwhile, I think someday we should build a monument to honor the mouse for all its sacrifices to make us healthier and smarter. Well, at least we should toast its many contributions .. if we’re smart.

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)