Sure, wine is great for you — but it’s not the only healthy adult beverage in the bar.

In fact, you can get just about all the benefits of wine and then some from plain old beer — and the latest research confirms that a cold brew is every bit as good for your heart as a glass of red.

Researchers from Italy’s Fondazione di Ricerca e Cura say their survey of 200,000 people from around the world finds that regular beer drinkers have a 31 percent lower risk of heart disease than people who don’t drink booze at all.

That’s precisely the same decrease in heart risk enjoyed by wine drinkers — but it’s coming from hops and barley instead of grapes, according to the study in the European Journal of Epidemiology.

And that’s not all beer can do for you — not even close. Beer is also rich in potassium, magnesium, B vitamins and key antioxidants. It can help lower the inflammation linked to heart disease and other serious problems, and raise levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol by as much as 12 percent.

Beer is also the single best source of dietary silicon around, which can help protect your bones as you age.

One study even found that dieters who drink beer can lose more weight — proving that the so-called “beer belly” is a myth. If you see a drinker with a big belly, take a look at what he’s eating — because that’s almost certainly the real reason for his keg-sized gut.

Of course, whether you drink wine or beer, you’ll only get the benefits if you make your habit a moderate one and cut yourself off before you drink too much (and if you have to wonder if you’ve had too much, you’ve probably reached that point).

Keep it to a glass or two a night, and you’ll enjoy both the benefits and the taste.

So go ahead — pop the cork or crack open a frosty one. It’s good for you.

That, or maybe a little brandy.

But there’s another drink that might help you get off to dreamland quicker — and it’s not what you’d expect.

It’s tart cherry juice — and a new study finds that just two cups a day can help you sleep an average of 39 minutes longer and get a 6 percent boost in sleep efficiency.

That’s the amount of time you spend in bed actually asleep, instead of wondering when you’ll fall asleep.

Twenty volunteers were given either two cups of tart cherry juice concentrate diluted in water or two cups of ordinary fruit juice every day for a week — one in the morning, and one at night.

And along with more time asleep and better sleep efficiency, the cherry juice drinkers had dramatic bumps in melatonin levels. That’s the “sleep hormone” that some people take as a supplement — and apparently, tart cherries will work almost as well.

On the other hand, it’s probably easier — and cheaper — for most people to just add a melatonin supplement.

Whatever you do, make sure a good night’s sleep is on your agenda — because poor sleep has been linked to erectile dysfunction, hypertension, cognitive decline and even an early death.

Don’t look to sleeping pills for help — they can make matters worse, with some of the most popular meds linked to horrible side effects, including sleepers who get up and engage in bizarre behavior while still actually asleep.

Go natural instead — and if cherry juice isn’t your cup of tea, try a 2:1 ratio of calcium to magnesium in the evening. This combination can help you get to sleep quicker, and sleep better once you’re out.

In addition, a supplement of valerian root or valerian tea has also been shown to help bring about a good night’s sleep — try it about 30 minutes or so before bedtime.

All you need is a new approach: either more activity in the form of exercise, or less activity in the form of relaxation.

Either way, you come out ahead — because the latest research shows both of those approaches are every bit as effective for migraine relief as topiramate, the anti-seizure drug often given to patients who battle these debilitating headaches.

Swedish researchers randomly assigned 91 women suffering from migraines to either 40 minutes of exercise on a stationary bike three times a week, relaxation therapy or topiramate — and after three months, the benefits were even across the board.

Some women in each group even saw improvements of up to 75 percent, according to the details in the journal Cephalalgia.

But while both exercise and relaxation therapy come with other benefits — they can fight stress, lift the mood and boost overall health — the drug comes with an endless series of risks.

Eight of the women who took the med — a third of the group overall — experienced side effects, versus none in the other groups. And for three of the women, the side effects were so bad they had to quit the study.

There’s no word on what specific side effects the women experienced, but topiramate has been linked to kidney stones, urinary problems, loss of vision, vertigo, back pain, depression and more.

Now, if you’re like me, the idea of any time at all on a stationary bike — much less 40 minutes every other day — sounds a lot like torture.

The good news is, studies have consistently shown that you don’t have to get gym-style exercise to get the benefits of exercise… and I’d be surprised if that didn’t apply to the migraine-beating benefits as well.

Just find something you enjoy doing that gets your body moving and your blood pumping — everything from sports to gardening counts.

And if that doesn’t work for you and you’ve had no luck with relaxation therapy, you still don’t need to spin the wheel of side effects with a migraine med.

As I’ve told you before, there are plenty of safe and natural options for beating the pain — and you can get all the details, for free, in my online archives:

• Rose-tinted lenses can help slash pain levels by up to 70 percent.
• A form of magnetic stimulation called sTMS has been shown to bring real relief to nearly 40 percent of migraine sufferers.
• Magnesium, B vitamins and feverfew have all shown they can help ease the pain.

Common, safe nutrients and ordinary multivitamins are being blamed for everything in the book — and now, a new study claims any number of vitamins will cause women to die early.

But don’t panic, ladies — because like the other studies that claim vitamins come with risks, this one’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on.

First, the details meant to impress and frighten you at the same time: A study of some 39,000 women tracked for 19 years finds that those who took multivitamins, vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc, and/or copper had an ever-so-slightly higher risk of death from any cause than women who took no vitamins at all.

But here are some details that aren’t as prominent in the over-the-top coverage of this vitamin panic: The women were asked about their vitamin habits just three times in that 19-year period.

No one was actually given vitamins or placebos… no one’s habits were actually monitored… no one gave blood and the researchers don’t even know much about the overall health of the individual women in the study beyond what they reported in those surveys.

At best, you’ve got the weakest of all weak associations you could possibly make from an observational study — but it’s actually even worse than that.

Much worse — because an analysis by the Alliance for Natural Health finds that the supposed increase in death risk only appeared after some statistical “adjustments” that look to me more like statistical torture.

For example, women who had a healthy lifestyle and took vitamin C lived longer — but for that, the credit went to the healthy lifestyle.

There was a similar adjustment for “healthy eating” despite the fact that only two of the three surveys — spaced 18 years apart — even asked about food.

“(T)he authors just manipulated the data until they got what they wanted and more: Supplements not only didn’t help–they were killers!” the ANH wrote in its analysis. “And the lazy, biased, or naïve major media took it from there.”

You can get the “rest of the story” right here.

Here’s the bottom line on vitamins: Over the past 27 years, there have been exactly 11 deaths blamed on vitamin overdose. Medications, on the other hand, killed more than 37,000 Americans in 2009 alone — making legal drugs the nation’s leading cause of accidental death.

You tell me which is safer.