A lot of people have a usual habit of drinking after (instead of before) the workout! A number of studies have been conducted in the past to evaluate the pattern of alcohol consumption. However, only few studies can be found that have evaluated the impact of consuming alcohol before a workout.
The impact of alcohol on exercise performance depends upon how much you drink. Alcohol is central nervous system depressant which creates imbalance, impairs coordination & reaction time in a dose dependent fashion. Therefore there are higher chances that higher alcohol doses negatively impact workout performance.
Exercise performance gets impacted beyond blood concentration level of 92 mg/dL. In the USA, legal intoxication is defined as a blood concentration level of 80 mg/dL. In other words, if you are drunk, your exercise performance will be impacted.
Alcohol increases the amount of water lost from our body as urine. Drinks containing 4% w/ov or more alcohol inhibit release of hormone-ADH-antidiuretic hormone. This hormone acts to prevent diuresis & stimulates reabsorption of water back into the bloodstream so less is lost through urine. By suppressing the release of ADH, alcohol increases the amount of water loss through urine which can further lead to dehydration & impacts fluid replacement after exercise. Inadequate hydration can negatively impact your exercise performance the following day.
So should you avoid drinking alcohol after exercise to prevent dehydration? It depends upon how much you drink. An alcohol dose of less than 0.49 g/KG is unlikely to impact your rehydration efforts. This equates to 3 to 4 standard alcoholic drinks for a 70 to 72 KG person.
Glycogen is one the most important fuel stores in our body. When we exercise, glycogen stores in our liver & skeletal muscle are broken down to release glucose which is used for muscle contraction. During recovery after workout, we replenish glycogen stores. This is the reason having a carbohydrate rich meal is important after workout. This carbohydrate is broken down into glycogen which is used to build glycogen stores in our body. Alcohol is used to interfere in this function & is said to reduce glucose uptake into muscles. For the purpose of replenishing glycogen stores, it is important that we do not substitute our post workout meal with alcohol.
High intensity workout specifically eccentric exercise initially damages our muscle fibres. During post workout recovery, our muscles begin to repair & start adapting to workout routine. This results in improvement in our exercise performance with consistent training. Eccentric exercise involves contraction of muscles as they lengthen. For instance, during the downward movement of a bicep curl, the biceps muscle lengthens as it contracts and generates tension to resist the weight of the dumbbell acting downwards. After such high intense exercise, muscle strength decreases until it is fully repaired. Post workout consumption of alcohol can further worsen the muscle strengt. However, impact on muscle performance depends upon the dose of alcohol. Consuming 0.5 g/KG does not further exacerbate muscle strength loss.
Let us talk about the impact of consumption of alcohol on muscle protein synthesis. In order for muscle to grow in strength & size, our body needs to produce/build more proteins at a rate which is greater than the rate at which they break down. The process of building amino acids into proteins is called protein synthesis. Post workout alcohol consumption negatively impacts muscle protein synthesis. If your fitness goal is muscle building, it is not recommended that you consume alcohol after a heavy intense workout.
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