Written by Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS. In a study with 17 nurses and a control group, the nurses who took non-alcoholic beer went to sleep 5% faster and had 12.6 lower anxiety.
In a 2012 study (1), 17 healthy female nurses working rotating and/or night shifts consumed 333 milliliters of non-alcoholic beer (0.0% alcohol) with supper for 14 days and had their overnight sleep habits measured using Actigraphy (2) and compared to a control group of 17 age-matched females who did not consume any non-alcoholic beer during dinner.
After 14 days, those in the non-alcoholic group experienced:
- 5% less time needed to go to sleep (called ‘sleep latency’, 12.0161 versus 20.5064 minutes, p < 0.05)
- 2% fewer brain activity pulses, indicating better sleep quality (called ‘total activity’, 5284.79 versus 7258.8 activity pulse, p < 0.05)
In addition, the non-alcoholic group had 12.6% lower scores on anxiety as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (3) (18.0963 versus 20.6962, p < 0.05).
When suggesting how these sedative effects were elicited by the non-alcoholic beer, the researchers pointed to studies showing hops to have an effect on receptors in the body called GABA receptors (4) which, when activated, produce sedative effects (5).
The researchers further commented that “even though there was no increase in the length of repose in bed, there was a clear improvement in the quality of night-time sleep after the ingestion of beer at the end of the day” and concluded, “The moderate consumption of non-alcoholic beer will favor night-time rest, due in particular to its hop components, in addition to its other confirmed benefits for the organism.”
Source: Franco L, Sánchez C, Bravo R, Rodríguez AB, Barriga C, Romero E, et al. (2012) The Sedative Effect of Non-Alcoholic Beer in Healthy Female Nurses. PLoS ONE 7(7): e37290.
© 2012 Franco et al. Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Posted February 17, 2015.
References:
- Lourdes Franco. The Sedative Effect of Non-Alcoholic Beer in Healthy Female Nurses. PLoS One. 2012; 7(7): e37290. Published online 2012 Jul 18. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0037290
- Ancoli-Israel S. The role of actigraphy in the study of sleep and circadian rhythms. Ancoli-Israel S. Sleep 2003 May 1;26(3):342-92.
- Spielberger CD, Gorsuch RL, Lushene RE (2008) STAI Cuestionario de Ansiedad Estado-Rasgo. Publicaciones de Psicologı´a Aplicada. 7th ed. Madrid. TEA Publishers. 33. Cubero J, Narciso
- Aoshima H, Takeda K, Okita Y, Sheikh Julfikar H, Koda H, et al. (2006) Effects of beer and hop on ionotropic c-aminobutyric acid receptors. J Agric Food Chem 54: 2514–1519.
- “GABA Receptor Agonists” posted on Wikipedia
