Don’t Mix Alcohol and Body Building Workouts

Believe it or not, there are those who wonder if alcohol has an effect on their muscle building activities. The answer is a resounding yes alcohol will adversely affect your work out.

Protein is a key ingredient in muscle building and as such should not be interfered with. Unfortunately, alcohol impairs protein synthesis. Protein synthesis is the process by which amino acids are joined together to create complete proteins, alcohol consumption has been shown to slow this process by 20%.

The level of testosterone in the body is another factor in muscle building. If you are a woman and you are looking to build muscle mass, you will notice that woman develop lees muscle mass than men. Because of the low levels of testosterone, woman have 15 to 20 times less than men do. What does that have to do with alcohol? Alcohol not only decreases testosterone, it also increases estrogen.

When yo drink alcohol your kidneys retain large amounts of water so they can process the toxin. Yes, the body recognizes alcohol as a toxin. The body can become dehydrated when this happens.

Nerves control muscles and nerves produce the stimuli to contract muscles from electrolyte minerals dissolved in water. Further more water lubricates the joints and protects them from injury during workouts.

Drinking alcohol robs your body of key vitamins. There are many downfalls to consuming alcohol. If you drink alcohol you could deplete your body of some very important vitamins and minerals that it needs. When you exercise the most important vitamins are B and C, this tells you why alcohol consumption is so important.

In order to build muscle, you must breakdown fat deposits while increasing muscle mass. Alcohol works against this effort. Alcohol works against this effort. Alcohol contains empty calories, that is a calorie with no nutritional benefit. It also has twice as many calories as carbohydrates and protein.

While we are on the subject of calorie it is important to note that the calories taken in while drinking are the first ones burnt. This means that all other fat stores will remain and not be used for energy until alcohol calories are all burned. Not a good combination for a person wanting to build muscle mass and lose fat.

Alcohol affects on bodybuilding have been examined, but you also have to consider how alcohol affects the rest of the body. If you are trying to gain muscle mass, and are considering using products to help you, you need to be aware of the dangers of such products. Before you buy any product you need to research the pros AND the cons of that product. If you suffer from any of these, it will prove difficult to build muscle. Is it really worth the cost?