My last article focused on how alcohol will seriously impede your fat loss goals.

Here, I’ll give you the skinny on alcohol’s affects on muscle growth, and it ain’t pretty.

(1) Dehydration – Should be fairly obvious. Saturated muscles grow better than dry ones. Consuming alcohol dehydrates muscle tissue resulting in a weakened anabolic environment.

(2) Reduced Protein Synthesis – Protein synthesis is the process of building muscle. When we work out we break down our muscle tissue; growth then takes place in the rest period afterwards as the tissue is repaired - this process of repair is called ‘protein synthesis.’ The rate at which this happens decreases with alcohol consumption.

(3) Decreased Testosterone –The vast majority of research conducted in the past 25 years in both animals and humans has found that alcohol inhibits testosterone secretion. Testosterone is a very anabolic hormone which is why you want to implement a diet that naturally maximizes testosterone levels. Therefore alcohol should be minimized.

(4) Hangover - No explanation need here I hope. You can forget having a great workout for 48 or even 72 hours after a heavy night’s drinking.

Ineffective workouts = less than optimal muscle stimulation = a waste of time

Do yourself a favor, Stay Sober

Mark McManus

image credit: lazysupper 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Bodybuilding Diet, Build Muscle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.