Kudzu may help alcoholics

Heavy drinkers who tried the herbal extract kudzu for one week downed fewer drinks than people who received an inactive placebo treatment, according to new study findings released Monday.

Study author Dr. Scott E. Lukas of McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical Center in Massachusetts explained that during the experiment, people drank their first beer right away, but were less likely to want more beer if they had taken kudzu the previous week.

He said that kudzu may also help deliver blood to the brain, making people more satisfied with less alcohol. "We can see this in the data because people took more sips in order to finish each beer, but the sips were much smaller," Lukas said.

Kudzu contains isoflavones, antioxidants believed to confer a variety of health benefits. Previous research has shown that kudzu extracts help discourage drinking in rats and hamsters.

In the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Lukas and colleagues note that kudzu naturally contains only 1 percent isoflavones. To investigate further if kudzu might affect humans' desire to drink, the team developed a more concentrated extract of kudzu that contained 25 percent isoflavones.

Courtesy of Reuter's Health 5/17/2005

Steve - Kudzu has also been researched for treating postmenopausal symptoms, although on a much more minor scale than soy.