Hair of the dog

Someone famous once said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” and who can argue with that? But, did you know that beer might be an effective painkiller too? The results of a recent study published in the Journal of Pain suggest that beer, two pints to be exact, may have stronger analgesic power than acetaminophen. The good news is that elevating your blood alcohol content to around 0.08 percent also elevates your body’s pain threshold, which results in a fairly large reduction in pain intensity. The bad news is that the jury is still out on whether participants were just too buzzed to care after two pints—so don’t go for the brew to cure your headache quite yet.