Jun 30, 2009

Alcohol Should Be Avoided While Building Muscle

By Ricardo d Argence

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.

Most serious body builders will reach for a protein drink before anything else. There is a very good reason for this. Protein is critical to effective muscle building and protein synthesis should not be interfered with. Alcohol will definitely impair protein synthesis.

The process that joins amino acids together to form complete proteins is called protein synthesis. When a person drinks alcohol the process is slowed by 20%.

Another critical factor in muscle building is the testosterone level in the body. You have probably noticed that women don't build the amount of muscle mass as me do. There reason for this is the low testosterone levels in women; women normally have 15-20 times less testosterone in their bodies than me do.

What does that have to do with alcohol? Alcohol decreases the amount of testosterone in the body and increases levels of estrogen.

Hydration. When you drink alcohol, the kidneys must use massive amounts of water to process the toxin. Yes, the body recognizes alcohol as a toxin. When this happens, the body can quickly become dehydrated.

Muscles are controlled my nerves and the nerves produce the stimuli to contract muscles from electrolyte minerals dissolved in water. Additionally, water will lubricate the joints and protect them from injury while working out.

Consuming alcohol also robs key vitamins from the body. It destroys vitamins such as A, B, and C. It also depletes phosphorous and calcium stores in the body. Knowing that some of the most important vitamins for building muscles are vitamins B and C, you can understand why drinking alcohol while trying to build muscle really is a big deal.

When trying to build muscle, you need to deplete the stores of fat and increase the muscle mass. Alcohol works directly against this effort. Nutritionists will tell you that alcohol contains empty calories. Empty calories have no nutritional benefit at all. Alcohol also contains twice as many carbohydrates and calories as protein does.

While we are discussing calories, it should be noted that calories taken in while drinking are the first ones that are burned for energy. This means that all of the fat that is stored will remain in storage. It will not be burned for energy until every last alcohol calorie is burned. This is not a very good combination for a person that is trying to build muscle or lose fat.

We have looked at most of the major points regarding bodybuilding and alcohol, but you should also think about the effects of alcohol on other parts of the body. Prolonged use of alcohol can lead to diabetes, liver damage, and a host of other medical problems. When you have any of these problems it will make it more difficult to build muscle. Is it really worth it?

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