Over 80% of the American drink alcohol occasionally. But we all know that alcohol is simply not good for your body. Occasionally a drink can not do much harm, but with larger drinks it can have negative effects on your body.
It is also strange that because of sports we think about the right food, but we often do not wonder whether fitness and alcohol go together. The answer to this is very clear: rather leave the alcohol. In this article you can read why!
What does alcohol do to your body
It’s good that you are working out because you want to work on your fitness or because you want to grow muscle mass. In both cases, alcohol gives a negative influence. Alcohol causes various processes in the body to be disrupted, including your fat burning and muscle building.
So there go your results that you have achieved with fitness! Alcohol is seen by your body as a poison, and as soon as you ingest it, your body starts working hard to get it out again as quickly as possible. Other body processes are thereby stopped or disrupted, which can have negative consequences.
Alcohol increases cortisol
One of the consequences of drinking alcohol is that your cortisol level rises considerably. This means that your muscle tissue is broken down, but it also ensures that your muscles recover less quickly after a good fitness session. It is a waste of your training!
But it’s not just the cortisol that blocks your muscle recovery. The alcohol also ensures that the phosphorylation process in your body is slowed down. During this process, phosphor groups attach to the muscles, giving them more energy and growth. This decreases as soon as you drink alcohol and your muscles will have more difficulty recovering and growing.
Alcohol and testosterone
Testosterone is a known hormone that is very important for muscle building. It promotes muscle protein synthesis, so your muscles can grow more easily, your strength increases and your condition improves. Indispensable if you want to grow muscles by exercising. But as soon as you drink alcohol, this production is reduced.
Research has shown that your testosterone production drops by no less than 7% as soon as you drink about three to four glasses of alcohol. Age also plays an important role in this. The older you are, the faster and more your testosterone level drops when you drink alcohol. It then becomes more difficult for your body to grow muscles.
Alcohol causes moisture deficiency
Alcohol is not recommended either before or after fitness. You might think it is no problem to have a beer after exercise. But that certainly has direct consequences for your sports session. By exercising, your body produces lactic acid, which can later cause muscle pain.
As soon as you drink alcohol after exercise, your liver chooses to first break down the alcohol instead of the lactic acid. And your liver can be busy with that. For one glass of alcohol it takes about an hour to an hour and a half. In addition, alcohol also dries out, so that you can quickly incur a moisture and mineral deficiency. That while your body needs moisture so badly for your muscles to grow.
Fitness and alcohol don’t go together!
Finally, alcohol also ensures that your fat burning decreases or is even stopped altogether. You don’t even have to drink a lot of alcohol for that. A small amount of alcohol can already cause your fat burning to decrease by 70%. It’s not for nothing that the term beer belly comes from somewhere.
In short, there are a lot of reasons why fitness and alcohol absolutely do not go together. Alcohol quickly destroys your sporting results. A glass should be able to do it once, but if you really want to go for good results with the fitness, then you can now leave the alcohol better.
Many people think that there must be an underlying problem. If they have solved that problem, the addiction is also resolved. Unfortunately that is not the case. Once you are addicted to alcohol, you remain sensitive to alcohol, drugs or other temptations for life. Addiction is a disease that can occur due to psychological causes, but that does not disappear when the cause is removed. Therefore, it is important to know how to detox from alcohol. For example, anyone who has a drinking problem during a burnout period remains an alcoholic, even when the burnout has been successfully treated.