Effects Of Alcohol On Muscle Growth | Does It Destroy Your Muscle Gains?

Exotic weekend parties with booze and starters are what everyone needs to break the fatigue of the whole week.

But for bodybuilders, guzzling beers and ripping tequila shots goes against the commandment for getting ripped!

Most of you know that alcohol and a healthy lifestyle don’t go hand in hand.

But how many of you actually trust the fact that alcohol and muscle growth are almost equal to enemies?

According to our survey, most people don’t believe that alcohol can be any way close to sabotaging their muscles.

But the fact says that alcohol can definitely interfere with the results you are expecting off!

So does that mean you will off to let go of alcohol forever?

Woo! That’s a huge question, and to answer that you obviously need the following sections on – does alcohol affect muscle growth?

Alcohol and Muscle Gain Bodybuilding – How Does Alcohol Affect Muscle Growth?

Alcoholic drinks are favorite weekend relaxing rituals in the modern world. Almost half of the population likes taking a break from the tiring week, to indulge in some gatherings with drinks and food!

But they don’t really understand how their habit of drink and chill could impair their lives!

Out of a dozen of negative effects alcohol has on your body, the latest trend catcher is the relation between booze and muscles!

This trend has caught up the nerves of the bodybuilders who once celebrated their muscle gains with drinks in their hands.

You will be surprised to know that alcohol:

• Impairs with muscle growth
• Makes you gain fat
• Dehydrates your body
• Interferes with your muscle recovery
• Depletes you of your energy levels
• Slows your reaction time

All these Alcohol Effects on Muscles are worth reading about, to make sure that you don’t let your gains just go off!

Hence, our next sections give you a detailed analysis of how does alcohol affects muscle growth and other important factors for bodybuilding.

#1: Alcohol consumption and Muscle Growth – What effect does alcohol have on muscle growth?

How does alcohol actually affect muscle growth after all it’s empty of any calories?

Well, that what you might have heard from your friends! But the facts lie below!

All our gym freak readers must already know that:

• 1 gram of carbohydrates contains 4 calories
• A single gram of proteins contain 4 calories as well
• While 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories

But alcohol which lacks nutrients and macronutrients offers 7 calories with every 1 gram! Hence, if you have heard that alcohol is calories-free, it’s just a myth!

But the major question here is, how does alcohol really affect muscle growth?

Muscle building is all about perfect nutrition, exercise, and recovery rate. However, even if you follow these three rules combined with alcohol, the results might not be enough!

The reason why we say so is the fact that alcohol impairs myofibrillar protein synthesis. This protein synthesis usually occurs in your body to repair the muscle protein for better muscles.

In fact, the diet that you take during bodybuilding mainly aims to enhance this process.

But with alcohol, the muscle protein fails to form, and hence the protein levels go down!

Because of this, your muscles fail to undergo proper repair post the stress and tear they undergo during exercises.

However, many people might mix up high protein sources to combat the negative effects of alcohol.

But this has no control over the harm alcohol causes to your muscle growth.

Moreover, it’s not just muscle growth that gets affected here, even your weight loss and health efforts lie at risk! This is because of the ability of alcohol to affect the glands of your body and producing hormonal changes.

Let us see how does alcohol affect muscle growth, fat levels, and your health!

#2. Alcohol Effects – Abnormal Weight Gains and Hormonal Changes!

You are already aware of how does alcohol affects muscle growth.

But did you know that alcohol can even cause weight gain?

Alcohol consumption causes impairment in your hormonal balance. This hormonal imbalance mostly appears in males in the form of testosterone levels imbalance.

Alcohol converts free testosterone into estrogens causing abnormal weight gains and poor masculine functions.

Since testosterone plays an important part in building lean muscles, its decreasing levels pose threat to your muscle mass.

Hormones are further responsible for all the reproduction, growth, and development functions of your body.

With your hormone levels becoming abnormal there are chances of many diseases entering your body.

These diseases can make you weak and you will gradually not be able to perform enough exercises.

Further alcohol makes it difficult to absorb important nutrients that can keep you from a healthy state.

#3. Alcohol and Muscle Growth – How Does Alcohol Affect Recovery!

For an athletic body, rapid recovery from sore muscles matters a lot.

According to studies, with regular consumption of alcohol, the recovery process becomes slow!

This is because of the diuretic effects of alcohol that lead to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Further, dehydration also poses athletes with threats like cramps, muscle pulls, and muscle strains.

Apart from this, alcohol also hinders sleep cycles, causing a decrease in the human growth hormone levels.

HGH is a very important hormone for bodybuilders as it has a major role in building and repairing muscles.

But with alcohol, your HGH goes as low as 70% leading to poor muscle growth and recovery.

Next, we talk about, how alcohol depletes your energy levels leading to the inability of performing intense workouts.

#4. Alcohol’s Effects on Your Energy Levels

After consumption, alcohol moves towards the small intestine from where it is absorbed into the cells. This disrupts the water balance of the cells causing a water imbalance in your body.

Because of this, your muscle cells lose their ability to produce adenosine triphosphate!

ATP is the energy currency of your body that fuels the cells to perform various functions.

But with the decrease in ATP, your body loses energy, as well as endurance.

Moreover, during the energy-deprived state of your body, your muscles start converting into fat.

These fats are then used to form energy to fuel your organs for various essential functions.

#5. Alcohol and Reaction Time

Even small amounts of alcohol can cause slower reaction times like decreased hand–eye coordination.

With chronic consumption of alcohol, your mind loses its ability to respond quickly.

This decreases your reaction time leading to impaired performance and would also increase the risk of injury.

#6. Effects on Immunity

Alcohol creates inflammation in your body, especially in the stomach. This hurts your immunity.

Strong immunity is important for higher performance, weight loss, and muscle building.

Consuming alcohol stresses out your immune system. Over time weakness creeps in that move away from your focus from bodybuilding and performance.

Instead, your body starts focusing on overcoming the chronic habit of alcoholism.

Moreover, alcohol can even lead to high blood pressure and many chronic diseases.

To recover from all this you will need rest, but alcohol even alters your sleep cycle! However, people often believe that taking few drinks will help them relax and sleep. But the effects are just the opposite.

It disrupts your sleep cycle including the REM cycle causing serious health issues.

REM cycle is when you are in your deep sleep, your brain activity, muscle repair, and learning are at their peak.

Alcohol on the other hand causes insomnia which hinders these healthy cycles. Further insomnia can also cause a higher appetite leading to weight gain.

Alcoholism also causes digestive issues like excess acid secretion causing dehydration and loss of muscle recovery.

After reading through the various negative effects of alcohol on your body, you must have already planned to eliminate it from your life.

But we have something special for all our alcohol lovers here!

A secret rule book that teaches you how to maintain muscles as well as your party life!

Secret Rulebook – Maintain Muscles With Booze!

There is always a solution to turn the bad things for you into something less bad.

Hence, all you need to do is follow the rules below to help yourself in choosing both drinks and training at the same time!

#1: Drink lots and lots of water

Make sure to drink a lot of water, before, during, and after your drinks.

In fact, apart from drinking several glasses of water throughout the day, you can also drink one glass of water for each alcoholic drink you take.

Then you can even keep a bottle of water beside your bed before going to sleep.

This will make sure that whenever you feel thirsty, your laziness doesn’t drive you away.

#2. Being selective of your drinks

There is no point in spending a lot of money on your supplements and food when you ultimately go for a cheap drink.

Try going for the high-quality stuff.

You can go for the finer wines and spirits while also paying attention to the ingredients and production process.

In the end, what matters is what goes inside your body.

Another advantage of going for the high-quality stuff would be the price you pay! Those expensive drinks will automatically control your portions.

#3. Not all alcoholic drinks are the same!

People often mix up various drinks to prepare a cocktail or something extraordinary. These drinks often contain high sugar and sweetener levels.

They might also contain chemicals and other prominent an additive that will be bad for your training.

Hence go for the simple ones or with drinks that don’t contain sugar.

The sugar will definitely put you on the weight gain road and not the bodybuilding one.

#4. Don’t substitute alcohol for sleep

You might laugh at this. But trust us, you might have done this, or seen somebody do this.

But what we are trying to tell is don’t switch to alcohol when you have an important training session the other day.

Sleep and rest are two important things that people often ignore while training for bodybuilding.

But the fact is sleep is important for shredding as well as building.

Hence enjoy a couple of drinks and go to the bed in time!

#5. Don’t do alcohol every day!

The most important rule on the list is not to drink alcohol every day.

In fact, if your rule is to have a cheat meal or drink every day, bring in the changes right now!

Your day-to-day habits yield products, and if your daily habit is drinking every day you have already read about the products above.

Hence don’t consume alcohol every day! Once in two weeks is a good going!

Conclusion

Does alcohol affect muscle growth?

Does alcohol destroy muscles?

Many such questions often come into the minds of bodybuilders while going through various guides to muscle gains!

According to experts, alcohol does affect muscles in negative ways.

The effects of alcohol depend on the amount consumed and tolerance levels. Some studies even show that a small number of certain kinds of alcohol can have a protective effect on the body.

But few drinks can even nullify your efforts towards health goals by wiping out the effects of your workouts!

They can even wipe out your endurance, and mental focus.

Hence the bottom line is that it is always better to keep track of your drinks and how do you feel the other day of drinking. This will make you understand your tolerance.