Physical activity after drinking alcohol. Alcohol and fitness - a sore subject

In short: Regular exercise helps your body deal with alcohol better. Morning exercises will help you digest alcohol easier in the evening. Physical activity even helps to sober up when you really need it.

Do you love sports? And do you like to drink? You are probably wondering: how do these habits fit together? Will such a double load on the body spoil health?

Are sports and alcohol compatible?

In fact, with regular (or occasional) alcohol consumption, it is much more useful to engage in light sports (jogging, physical education) than to lead a completely unsportsmanlike lifestyle. Because moderate exercise is adaptogen, that is, sport increases the body's resistance to various harmful effects, including the negative effects of alcohol. In particular, in athletes, muscle catalase is involved in the metabolism of alcohol (it can take up to 12% of the amount consumed), so they have a higher tolerance to alcohol.

It is not forbidden to go in for sports even shortly before drinking alcohol: if during the day you plan to go to the gym, and in the evening you drink, then one drink will damage your health. So a feast is not a reason to refuse training.

On the other hand, early physical activity can reduce future harm from alcohol - for the best effect, a cyclic load (running, skiing, cross-country or exercise bike) is recommended for 1-1.5 hours 12 hours before the start of the feast. This will improve the metabolism in the body and allow you to process alcohol better, and therefore get less drunk and easier to endure a hangover, especially if you use the full range of measures recommended by a toxicologist in a special article “How to drink and not get drunk” before drinking alcohol.

How to sober up with exercise

A short, but very intense physical activity can even help sober up for a while in a critical situation, when the booze is still going on. To achieve sobering up, physical activity is necessary with the obligatory onset of profuse sweating and an increase in heart rate of at least twice the initial one. It is recommended to use only with good physical fitness!

Does drinking interfere with training?

As we found out, sport does not in the least interfere with the use of alcohol. But alcohol, unfortunately, interferes with sports activities. Drinking after the gym to some extent will reduce all the main benefits that you intend to get from the workout.

It is especially undesirable to drink alcohol when you play sports in order to build muscle mass: alcohol in moderate doses increases strength endurance, but slows down muscle growth. Even a couple of glasses of wine (300 ml) with daily intake will reduce the rate of glycogen formation in the muscles by 15-20%. Namely, glycogen stores determine the volume of the muscle. In addition, alcohol reduces the difference between submaximal and maximum physical activity - therefore, there is a risk of "not calculating" the load.

Why sports reduce alcohol cravings

One day a visitor to our site asked the following question:

“The question is more psychological: how to replace alcohol if you are used to drinking it in the evenings out of boredom, for pleasure and taste sensations? I can eat junk food instead of alcohol, but this is also not very useful. And without satiating taste sensations, evenings are too boring. How to get rid of such a need - maybe there are some standard tips?

Please note: this way of dealing with a hangover suitable for young, physically trained people, since all of the above positive effects are realized due to the additional tension of the heart, which, with a hangover, already works under load.

As an option for physical activity, sex can also be considered. hangover sex in the same way, it stimulates the metabolism at the cost of an increased load on the heart. The release of endorphins (hormones of pleasure) during sex improves well-being and relieves headaches.

What are the hangover symptoms of exercise?

Physical activity allows you to quickly get rid of the smell of fume, because fume is the removal of under-oxidized products of alcohol processing through the lungs. Physical activity speeds up the metabolism and helps the body get rid of harmful substances faster.

What is the danger of sports after drinking

It happens that after a single drinking a person feels an irresistible desire to drink again and realizes that he is about to go into an unwanted binge. Physical activity (sports or work) is the easiest and most effective way to prevent a person from going into a binge at home. If the body is too weakened for physical exertion, then medical assistance is indispensable: to prevent binge, MDD agonists work well (use only under medical supervision!) And a short course of acupuncture from an experienced specialist.

But if you still broke into a binge, then you can’t already load yourself with physical activity: it’s easy to break your heart. You can find statements that sport helps to get out of binge, as muscle load improves blood flow and metabolic processes of the body. In fact, there are a number of dangers here.

What will happen if an unprepared person is forced to run cross-country in the highlands? Nothing good, and the state of a hangover in this sense is akin to acute oxygen deficiency in the highlands. At one time, the slogan "Running from a heart attack" led many to this very heart attack. Another point that cannot be ignored: during binge, part of the fluid from the vascular bed goes into the tissues, that is, the blood becomes thick, viscous. Imagine how much effort the heart will have to make to push such blood through the vessels.

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Yesterday I drank something green, it burned, and today, as if nothing had happened, I go to the gym and work even more powerfully than I was going to - I work out the sin. Is it possible to do so? And how does alcohol affect the quality of training? We understand.

Let's start with the basics. What is alcohol made of? Any - from water and ethyl alcohol. Depending on the type of drink, it may also include yeast, malt, additives, sugar, and more. Alcohol, of course, seriously affects all body systems: nervous, cardiovascular, changes the mechanisms of thermoregulation, affects metabolism.

Alcohol and fitness

You definitely shouldn't exercise while drunk. In general, playing sports in any excited or stressful state is contraindicated. After alcohol, while hungover, you can expect your reaction rate to slow down. It can affect speed, strength and endurance within 72 hours. And of course, the risk of injury at this time is very high.

Endurance is severely reduced. During a hangover, the entire body is busy eliminating toxins, which means that it will not produce enough glucose for the muscles to work efficiently during training. When there is alcohol in the blood, it prevents the synthesis of glycogen, which means that all the results of training are initially nullified.

Muscle growth slows down. After libations, protein synthesis decreases, which prevents the growth and formation of muscle tissue. The liver is busy processing alcohol and is not able to produce the amino acids needed for muscle growth. In addition, the restoration of physical and mental tone, the burning of subcutaneous fat and the intellectual ability of the brain are impaired. Training is reduced to nothing, you are wasting your time.

Alcohol leads to dehydration. A decrease in fluid reserves in the body adversely affects both the ability to train and the entire body as a whole. Due to dehydration, the blood thickens, so the workload on the heart increases. Thermoregulation is disturbed: body temperature drops, the effect of training is zero. Alcohol has the worst effect on men: testosterone levels decrease, which in turn can lead to muscle degradation.

Alcohol and metabolism

As soon as alcohol enters the body, its main task is to eliminate it. The body does not provide a place to store ethanol. It needs to be taken out. Ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde under the influence of various enzymes - and this is a poison. With the accumulation of acetaldehyde, facial flushing, headache, nausea and vomiting occur.

Alcohol is a depressant. Like any depressant, it reduces reaction time and the ability to concentrate. It slows down the brain. Already after the release of the brain from alcohol, it remains in a depressed state, the brain cells cannot function normally for some time. A person at this time feels increased excitability.

The body in alcoholic intoxication is in a state of stress, all organs work with overload.

Alcohol and weight loss

As you might have guessed, in the process of losing weight, it is undesirable to drink alcohol. It negatively affects metabolism, increases the amount of adipose tissue, prevents the absorption of vitamins and minerals, reduces the efficiency of glucose utilization, increasing the risk of its transformation into fat.

The calorie content of alcohol is about 7 kcal per 1 g. All the calories that come with alcohol are stored by the body in fat, not having time to process them.

And needless to say, when you drink, your appetite grows, and the ability to control yourself decreases.

The presence of traces of alcohol in the body leads to chronic overwork syndrome. Muscle recovery is interrupted. You should not think that by exercising well and sweating, you will accelerate the removal of alcohol from the body - training does not affect the metabolism of alcohol. In addition, alcohol has a bad effect on sleep, which is necessary for recovery after a workout.

You should not exercise for 1-2 days after drinking alcohol. If you drink alcohol after a workout (within the same 1-2 days), the workout can also be considered in vain.

More interesting

If you drink alcohol after a workout, you can provoke the accumulation of fat mass, as well as problems with metabolism and the functioning of the circulatory system. Let's take a closer look at whether hangover sports can benefit or harm.

Quite often you can find statements that alcohol can have a positive effect on weight gain. However, drinking alcohol after a workout slows down recovery processes and dehydrates muscle tissue. It is quite clear that this does not contribute to progress at all. It doesn't matter whether you play sports professionally or not, alcohol after class is absolutely inappropriate.

If you had an intensive session, and then drank beer too, then the effectiveness of the training is sharply reduced. Do not forget that alcohol significantly slows down the synthesis of protein compounds. Even minimal amounts of alcoholic beverages have an extremely negative effect on your body after training.

How does alcohol affect the body of athletes?

To understand what kind of benefit or harm sports can bring with a hangover, it is necessary to consider the effect of this substance on the body of athletes:

Coordination is disturbed and the reaction rate slows down. You must understand that these abilities largely determine the quality of the training. It doesn't matter what sport you do, it's best to avoid drinking alcohol.
Alcohol significantly reduces stamina. Agree that the higher your endurance, the more intense and, as a result, effective will be the lesson. Alcoholic beverages reduce the rate of glycogen production, and you will not be able to train with sufficient intensity.
The processes of creating adipose tissue are launched. Alcohol has a high energy value, and at the same time, alcohol does not contain the carbohydrate-protein component necessary for athletes. Thus, drinking alcohol while losing weight, you negate all your efforts.
Alcoholic drinks disrupt sleep patterns, and it is at this time that the body recovers at maximum speed.
Alcohol leads to fluid imbalance and dehydrates the body. This not only slows down muscle growth, but also increases the risk of blood clots.
Alcohol negatively affects the functioning of the endocrine system, disrupting the hormonal balance.

You've probably already figured out what benefits or harms can come from hangover sports.

Can I drink alcohol after training?

We have already considered the issue of the effect of alcohol on the body, it's time to talk about the benefits or harms of sports with a hangover. The main goal of any workout is to get the muscles to work at maximum intensity. During exercise, the muscles experience strong tension, blood pressure rises, the respiratory system works with maximum load, since all tissues need a lot of oxygen.

All this suggests that the heart muscle is forced to work with maximum load and pump a large amount of blood. Being in this state and drinking alcohol, you make the body experience tremendous stress. The first organ that suffers significantly in this situation is the liver.

Under the influence of strong physical exertion, the liver is forced to switch to an active mode of operation in order to neutralize a large amount of toxins. If you also drink alcohol, then the body will have to destroy the alcohol. This requires a lot of water, which is also not enough due to the violation of the fluid balance.

Here are a few drinks that you can drink after class and benefit from it:

Green tea is an excellent tonic drink that can increase your vitality, accelerate metabolic processes and has an immunostimulating effect. Scientists have proven that for two hours after training, the protective capabilities of the body are very limited and green tea can help to cope with this problem.
Mate- this type of tea also has tonic properties and is able to invigorate perfectly. It is also necessary to note the ability of mate to improve the performance of the liver. Mate is also extremely useful for men, as it enhances sexual function.
Mineral water- will help in a short time to restore the water-salt balance in the body.
herbal teas- these drinks will help you restore fluid balance and increase the activity of the immune system.

When can I start exercising after alcohol?

If you have an event at which you can’t do without drinking alcohol, we recommend postponing the workout for a couple of days. If you visit the hall immediately after drinking strong drinks, you will not get a positive effect. Also, the next morning after drinking alcohol, you should have a good breakfast.

It is very important while taking alcoholic beverages as a snack to use foods rich in protein foods - cheese, meat or seafood. A good solution would also be the use of protein products and before going to bed. Speaking about the benefit or harm that sports can bring with a hangover, we recalled the violation of fluid balance. To avoid this unpleasant moment between alcohol, you should drink juice or fruit drink.

In any case, you should not get involved in alcohol, even if you are not a professional athlete. According to scientists, the maximum dose of alcohol for athletes is two glasses of wine or 0.5 liters of beer. If you do not drink more than this dose, then you can train even the next day after the holiday.

But after the training, it is best not to drink alcohol for at least a day, but at the same time not to violate the above norm. Here are some interesting facts to help you find out whether hangover sports can benefit or harm:

If alcohol is consumed systematically, then training will not be effective.
The state of severe intoxication in its effect on the body is similar to a pause in training lasting one week.
When you drank little alcohol, you can assume that you missed one lesson.
Alcoholic drinks cause sleep disturbance, which dramatically slows down the regenerative processes in muscle tissues.
Alcoholic beverages speed up the process of removing micronutrients from the body.
Under the influence of alcohol, the production of such a powerful anabolic hormone as somatotropin is reduced.

If you have not yet understood what benefits or harm sports with a hangover, then there should be at least a few days between drinking alcohol and exercising. In this case, you will not be able to cause serious damage to the body. Although a glass of good wine drunk a few hours after the end of the session will not be able to harm your health and will not reduce the effectiveness of the workout, it is worth giving up alcoholic beverages.

Fitness and hangover

Surely everyone already understands what benefit or harm sports can bring with a hangover. However, some people may assume that fitness does not involve such intense physical activities as, say, bodybuilding. However, in any case, conducting a cardio session with a hangover, you drastically reduce its effectiveness. In addition, due to a decrease in concentration and poor coordination, you can fall off the treadmill and get seriously injured.

Not a single instructor will allow a person who has consumed alcohol the day before to train under his guidance. The coach will advise you to go home and rest. Unfortunately, sometimes a person is sure that with a hangover he is not able to feel tired, which is completely untrue.

The thing is that alcohol lowers the pain threshold, but in any case, you will feel pain. Most often this happens after a few hours. If you have been drinking alcohol, then the only type of physical activity that you can afford is walking at a calm pace.

We have come across information on the net that yoga will help you cope with a hangover syndrome. However, this is not entirely true, because performing complex asanas, you can lose your balance and get seriously injured. If you have the strength, then, as we said above, walk down the street. You should definitely refrain from other types of physical activity. Recall that the training can be carried out no earlier than 30 hours after the cessation of drinking alcohol. According to scientists, it is this length of time that the body needs to recover from the negative effects of alcohol.

You need to accept the fact that sports are completely incompatible with alcohol. If you drink strong drinks rarely and in small doses, then this will not bring much harm. But when alcohol is taken, say, at least once a week, then after each such occurrence, you can count that you missed one class.

For more about the benefits and harms of sports with a hangover, see the following video:

The use of strong drinks, unfortunately, is considered the norm in modern society. We will not talk about the prerequisites for this phenomenon, its social significance and the influence of alcohol on the moral character of the individual and society within the framework of this article. But let's try to consider a number of other issues that are important for those who lead a healthy lifestyle, go in for sports at an amateur or professional level. We will talk about how alcohol affects muscles and sports, is it possible to drink alcohol after a workout and how long after a workout can you drink alcohol?

What you need to know about the effect of alcohol?

The active ingredient in any alcoholic drink is ethanol - ethyl alcohol. The intoxicating effects of various alcoholic beverages are associated with its ingestion into the human body. Stronger drinks contain high concentrations of ethanol (40-70%), less strong drinks, such as wine and beer, contain smaller doses (4.5-12%).

Emotional coloring of the state of intoxication

Probably, every adult who has ever taken a sip of alcohol knows that the more “concentrated” the drink is, the faster the effect of intoxication sets in. By the way, about the effects. A person uses alcohol in completely different life situations and it affects everyone in his own way. Someone’s mood immediately improves and he has fun, while someone is overcome by inexplicable sadness. There are also those who become overly aggressive, exhibit antisocial behavior. Obviously, the emotional coloring of human behavior does not depend on the intake of alcohol. After all, it is completely different. Alcohol only frees consciousness from the framework and often the true "I" comes out.

Feeling worse

But, in addition to not always acceptable emotional coloring, the state of alcoholic intoxication has many physiological moments that do not have the best effect on the general condition of the body. This is a deterioration in coordination of movements, weakness, lethargy, loss of control over speech and one's own actions. The effects listed above are not accidental, because ethanol is a poison with a cellular mechanism of action. It is most toxic to the liver - it is this organ that is responsible for the metabolism of ethanol, that is, for its "processing" into products that can be excreted from the body.

Influence on the work of internal organs

What are the risks of drinking alcohol for athletes? Everything is quite logical and simple - alcohol significantly affects the liver, which in athletes is already overloaded with work due to constant physical exertion and specific nutrition. Let's take a closer look at this point:

The liver of a person who regularly performs certain loads and uses slightly higher dosages of protein compared to a simple layman, and so works "by the sweat of his brow." The fact is that during the breakdown of proteins, the amount of nitrogenous products in the body increases and the liver must “send” the right amount of them to the synthesis of amino acids, and process everything superfluous and make it available for excretion.
The same vital internal organ is involved in the metabolism of fatty acids - it is fats that make up the cell membranes of the body, the human nervous system and steroid hormones, which include sex hormones.
Let's not forget about the metabolism of glucose - the main source of energy for the brain and muscle contractions. It also flows in the liver. As you can see, she has a lot of tasks. And the liver of an athlete (no matter what direction) has twice as many of these tasks - after all, any practitioner sets himself, first of all, the task of synthesizing new body tissues.

Now imagine that instead of performing the above functions, your liver must urgently detoxify alcohol. She will do this according to the principle of priority: when a poison enters the body, the task of the liver is to “neutralize” it as soon as possible. And for this, again, energy and nutrients are needed, in general, everything that could be used for the notorious synthesis. In a word, one conclusion suggests itself: alcohol and training are extremely incompatible things.

At the beginning of the article, we looked at the general outline of how alcohol affects training and why it reduces athletic performance. Now let's talk in more detail about how alcohol affects muscles.

We have already mentioned the energy required to render alcohol harmless to the liver. This energy in the human body is represented by molecules of ATP-adenosine triphosphate - a universal compound, during the breakdown of which this same energy is released. So, in order for your muscles to contract, you need the same ATP. Accordingly, the functional characteristics of the muscles when drinking alcohol are reduced simply because there is not enough “fuel”. Muscle growth also suffers with ethanol consumption - protein synthesis is a very energy-intensive process that requires a lot of energy. But not only that! We list the four main conditions for muscle growth (according to Professor V.N. Seluyanov):

pool of free amino acids in the cell;
the presence of hydrogen ions in the muscle fiber;
the presence of anabolic hormones in the blood;
the presence of free creatine in the muscle fiber.

The presence of free creatine

Let's start with the last item on our list - free creatine. Creatine is a high-energy compound synthesized in the liver from 3 amino acids: arginine, glycine and. The result is a funny paradox: when drinking alcohol, the body does not have enough energy to synthesize the energy-intensive substance necessary for building muscles. Moreover, the listed amino acids are non-essential, which means they can be synthesized on their own. But the problem is that they are all synthesized in the same liver, and it, again, is busy neutralizing ethanol, and all its resources are spent on this.

Anabolic hormones

As for the presence of hormones in the blood, in order to begin to act, they must enter the cell. And here, as an obstacle for them, the product of alcohol metabolism appears - acetaldehyde (how exactly it is obtained will be discussed below). This compound can freely pass into the cells of the body, disrupting the throughput of cell membranes. In other words, if acetaldehyde enters the cell, it will be difficult for anything else to get there, including anabolic hormones. This means that even if you introduce anabolic agents from the outside, you will not get a 100% positive result from them. That is, in the case of the simultaneous use of anabolic hormones and alcohol, most of the hormones will leave your body unchanged. In a word, both money and efforts will be thrown to the wind.

Hydrogen ions in muscle fiber

There should be a lot of hydrogen ions in the muscle fiber, but at the same time, they should be present there for a very limited time. Why, now we will explain.

Hydrogen ions improve the permeability of the cell membrane, that is, they contribute to a better entry of anabolic agents (amino acids and hormones) into the cell. They also facilitate the access of hormones to the hereditary information of the cell, thereby triggering protein synthesis in the muscles. Moreover, this happens due to the so-called "limited destruction" of the cell. And here we can see the negative side of a strong acidification of the cell (that is, the accumulation of a large number of hydrogen ions) - these very destructions may turn out to be excessive. For this reason, hydrogen ions must be removed from the cell as soon as possible.

For this purpose, there is a lactate ion - when combined with hydrogen, it turns into lactic acid, since the cell membrane is permeable for this compound. In a word, hydrogen ions can leave the muscle cell in the form of lactic acid. But what happens if you took alcohol before your workout? The answer to this question is simple. It becomes more difficult to remove hydrogen ions, which is why they stay in the muscle fiber longer, causing much more “destruction” than expected. That is, your training causes a negative effect, in its course you damage the structures of your body, preventing them from recovering. Accordingly, you work "in the minus".

Pool of free amino acids

Regarding the pool of free amino acids, you need to consider the following. After drinking alcohol, due to the reasons listed above, there will not be very many amino acids in your cell. One part of them will be deaminated, that is, converted into sources of energy and NH2 groups in order to neutralize alcohol. And the second part simply will not get to the cell due to its poor permeability.

So, let's summarize how alcohol affects muscles after a workout. As the cell's energy supply processes suffer and the utilization of acidic products of muscle contraction is disrupted, the synthesis of anabolic hormones, as well as their entry into the cell, is hindered, and your training performance will suffer, to put it mildly.

The effect of alcohol on excess weight

The concept of excess weight, as a rule, means an excess amount of subcutaneous fat, in other words, fat. Moreover, excessive accumulation of fat occurs not only under the skin, but also in the body cavities, thereby squeezing the internal organs and reducing the flow of blood to them. Alcohol contributes to weight gain by increasing the fat component. How exactly this happens - read on.

Appetite increase

Once in the stomach, alcohol irritates its walls. At the same time, the taste of ethanol-containing drinks is bitter (any other can be mixed with it, but bitterness is present in any case). Both of the above circumstances stimulate appetite by acting on two independent mechanisms for stimulating eating behavior. The result is you want to eat. And now let's remember what was said at the very beginning of the article - you lose self-control, due to the fact that the cerebral cortex that forms your personality turns off (to one degree or another, depending on the dose), your subcortex takes over , sort of an inner animal. It is made up of simple basic instincts, and worst of all, the less control the cortex has, the more likely it is that the subcortex will satisfy its needs at any cost. Accordingly, you will eat much more than you need, because each new portion of alcohol stimulates the appetite again. And self-control, respectively, is reduced.

Fluid retention in the body

Another factor contributing to weight gain is fluid retention with the systematic use of alcohol. This is due to the fact that ethanol contributes to tissue dehydration - in other words, increased water consumption. The sensation of dryness in the mouth does not appear with a simple. And since our body adapts to what we do with it, with the systematic use of ethanol, the production of antidiuretic hormone, which is responsible for the maximum preservation of water within the bloodstream, increases. Because of this, in turn, blood pressure rises, the load on the heart increases, even against the background of ordinary household stress. What can we say about sports training!

Is it possible to drink alcohol after a workout - a question, rather, a rhetorical one. After all, any sane person who has carefully read all the previous sections of the article will understand why you can’t drink alcohol after a workout, and even more so before it.

Even one bottle of beer drunk in the evening can lead to the fact that training after alcohol the next day will have reduced strength. Sports exercises in themselves give a significant load not only on the muscles, but also on most of the internal organs. The heart, lungs, other organs, they all begin to work in an almost limiting mode and they need time to recover. If at this time the body has to give a fair amount of energy to get rid of alcohol and its decay products, it is easy to guess the possible negative consequences.

A real athlete who trains regularly, and not occasionally, should not even wonder how long after a workout you can drink alcohol. After all, even if you don’t drink alcohol immediately after a workout in the gym, but, for example, after a couple of hours or the next day, then it may not affect the last workout, but the next one, as we already wrote, will have to be canceled.

alcohol metabolism

Ethanol, having entered the stomach, is absorbed into the blood, with which it enters the liver through the portal vein. Here, a series of chemical reactions take place, designed to help ensure that the poison (which is ethanol) is rendered harmless. There are three pathways for the metabolism of alcohol:

the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase;
through the cytochrome P 450 system;
liver catalase.

Accumulation of harmful elements

The largest amount of ethanol is metabolized by the first pathway. There is a splitting of the ethanol molecule into an acetaldehyde molecule and into the reduced coenzyme NADH. Acetaldehyde is further converted to acetic acid. During this transformation, hydrogen peroxide is formed, which is a free radical and, accordingly, the culprit of direct cellular damage.

The acetic acid itself is converted into acetyl coenzyme A, a universal substrate for your body that can then be used to synthesize fatty acids. Or it can be used to produce one molecule of ATP. It would seem that here it is, the benefit! It turns out a whole molecule of ATP! Do not rush to rejoice - for its production, at least 3 ATP molecules must be spent. Total - minus 2 ATP molecules. Despite the fact that alcohol does not metabolize all at the same time, but as it is absorbed into the bloodstream and enters the liver. And the amount of energy and substrates needed for the metabolism of alcohol is limited.

Acidosis

Thus, a large amount of acidic products of incomplete alcohol metabolism accumulate in the blood of an ethanol consumer: acetic acid, acetaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide. All this shifts the pH of the body to the acidic side, and for our body this state is an “emergency”. It is called acidosis. In this state, all metabolic processes in your body are much less efficient, including your brain - that's where the feeling of euphoria comes from, impaired speech, gait, mental activity. When acidosis becomes critical, the metabolic processes in your brain stop and you simply lose consciousness. At the same time, brain cells partially die, because due to strong acidification, the process of cellular respiration in them becomes impossible. In addition, a certain amount of water must be present in each nerve cell. And what happens to the liquid while drinking alcohol, we remember from the previous sections.

Deterioration of nerve impulses

By the way, not only the brain itself consists of nerve cells, but also the pathways from it - the peripheral nerves. They, strictly speaking, are processes of the bodies of nerve cells, and intertwined with each other, these processes form peripheral nerves. These are kind of "wires" that connect the brain with all organs of the body. Including the muscles. The deterioration of the quality of the "signal" leads to a deterioration in the quality of movement, you cannot transmit a high-quality impulse along the nerve fiber due to the fact that the cell that needs this impulse does not work correctly. Or it doesn't work at all.

Interesting fact! Scientists have noticed that in people with a large body weight, alcohol is excreted from the body at a more vigorous pace than their thinner counterparts.

Does alcohol affect testosterone?

As briefly mentioned above, alcohol affects testosterone levels, lowering them for a number of reasons. However, I would like to focus on the drink, which, for some reason, is not classified as "serious" alcohol. I'm talking, of course, about beer.

This drink is brewed from malt and hops. Hops are an excellent source of phytoestrogens - substances of plant origin, the structure is very reminiscent of female sex hormones. With a systematic increase in the concentration of such sex hormones in a man's body, his hormonal profile changes not for the better for him. Fat deposits appear according to the female type, visceral fat is actively deposited (around the internal organs). At the same time, behavior becomes lethargic, aggression and the desire to be the first give way to laziness and complacency. Remember the medieval monks - classic beer drinkers with rounded tummies. As for them, there is another important point - for the monks, the issue of reducing libido was very relevant. Beer successfully solved this issue, because beer was brewed, first of all, in monasteries.

I drank before training: what to do?

Considering all of the above, if an athlete drank the day before, and he has a training session ahead of him, then the most optimal and reasonable course of action is to skip the session, since alcohol before training is simply unacceptable. Instead, it is better to take a shower at a comfortable temperature, stock up on a 1.5-liter bottle of mineral water and the same bottle of yogurt. Drinks should be drunk in small portions, alternating water with kefir. In parallel, it is necessary to take a double dose of a vitamin complex containing vitamin B 12. This must be done for the following reasons:

Mineral water will fill the deficit of fluid and ions.
Kefir will replenish lactate reserves, as one of the most actively consumed substrates when consuming ethanol.
Vitamin B12 will help restore the nervous system and restore the speed of transmission of nerve impulses.

During the rest of the day, it is preferable to consume lean meat and cottage cheese in sufficient quantities, eating vegetables or drinking vegetable juice.

The training process can only be resumed the next day. At the same time, training should be easy. It is advisable to use narrow-local exercises for small muscle groups. The ideal option is the muscles of the hands, since their activation improves cerebral circulation, and the abdominal muscles - the liver will also require an increased concentration of oxygen.

Remember, no matter what kind of load you plan to take yourself. After drinking alcohol, especially in large quantities, it is better to refrain from them.

The rate at which alcohol is eliminated from the body

Alcohol is one of the components of the active life of many people. Rare meetings and evening parties do without it. At the same time, everyone knows about the dangers of alcohol. And they are justified by various excuses, like small weaknesses inherent in every person.

Everyone knows that drinking alcohol, to put it mildly, is not healthy. It negatively affects the heart, blood vessels, brain and other human organs. But some people are not able to resist the opinion of society that it is so established, and therefore you need to drink on a holiday. Not the ability to refuse is weak willpower.

But perhaps my thoughts linking together sports, training, muscle growth after alcohol will help you form your irreconcilable attitude to wine and vodka products.

After all, few people know that the influence of the green serpent also affects the state of our muscles in a bad way. I hope that this factor may influence the decision of many people to drink alcoholic beverages. After all, every person, regardless of gender, wants to look good, and this is impossible with flabby muscles swollen with fat. So what is the connection between the negative impact that alcohol has and muscles as a human organ? Well, let me start my story...

What sport after alcohol?

Yes, none! But to understand the answer, you first need to understand what alcohol actually is. This is a very high-calorie chemical compound, but at the same time it does not provide energy and benefits to the body, but only causes harm.

We waste a lot of time to process alcohol, and its components, which resemble carbohydrates, do not release glycogen during processing, which means they cannot positively affect the muscles. The body spends much more time processing them than on foods of equal calorie content. But where are sports and alcohol?

It's simple, human muscles already contain glycogen, which is needed for their energy supply. If the body is engaged in the elimination of alcohol toxins, it simply does not care about the synthesis of this element. If you drink before a workout or even after it, there will be zero sense from it.

Drinking alcohol brings you and all your organs significant damage. When taking even a small dose of alcohol, the process of processing food and obtaining nutrients slows down in the human digestive system. Thus, anabolic processes - the formation of new cells and tissues - practically stop.

Alcohol negatively affects sleep. Many people know this. But few people know that growth hormone works exclusively at night, during our rest. And he is responsible for the formation of muscle and bone tissue.

On the issue of the effect of alcohol on muscles - here men even get more than women. After all, everyone knows that it is much easier for the representatives of the stronger sex to pump up muscle mass. The explanation for this is the hormone testosterone - it is characteristic exclusively for men. And it is he who promotes active muscle growth.

When alcohol enters the body, testosterone production is disrupted. Alcohol dramatically reduces the level of this hormone in the blood and reduces muscle tissue. So your training, even the next day or the day after its use, will not bring practically any results, except for fatigue.

This is the effect of alcohol on muscle growth and you can’t get away from it. You can just not use it at all. So if someone offers you alcohol after a workout, not to mention taking it before it, then always refuse, properly motivating.

Indeed, in addition, alcohols, entering the body, force it to use the liquid in it at an accelerated pace. This leads to some dehydration. If you go to the gym, then instead of losing extra pounds, get rid of muscle mass. And the muscles themselves will become flabby and inelastic.

If we take into account the fact that at the same time alcohol negatively affects the heart rate and increases blood pressure, then training can even turn into a dangerous activity.

Physical activity after drinking alcohol is somewhat similar to trying to play sports after a hearty meal at a fast food restaurant. They will take a lot of strength and energy, but will bring absolutely no benefit. The conclusion is simple - alcohol and sports are incompatible!

So if you want to get a lean, toned, and simply beautiful body, remember that drinking alcohol, even in small doses, has an exhausting effect on the body. We with the editors of the site www.site invite you to think about whether short minutes of dubious pleasure are worth all the effort you have spent!