STUDIES SHOW THAT ALCOHOL IS REALLY NOT AS BAD FOR YOUR PHYSIQUE AS YOU THINK (JK)

Just a disclaimer, this will be a somewhat long but worthwhile post. This topic fundamentally impacts everyone since we all either consume alcohol ourselves or are at the very least somewhat close to someone who does or has. The only agenda behind this post is to inform; I do not directly advocate the consumption of alcohol, but what I do advocate is a moderate lifestyle. Let’s get to it.

During my college graduation ceremony this year, I had the privilege of seeing and hearing president Barack Obama speak. Being that it was Rutgers’ 250th graduation ceremony, our commencement speaker had to be someone special. The word special is an understatement to describe the most inspirational, intriguing, thought-provoking hour of my life. While president Obama spoke, the Rutgers football stadium, which included the entire class of 2016 along with the families of all 11,000 graduates was absolutely silent. The one idea that he touched on was that of “confirmation bias,” and although he warned against it in a political context, it got me really reflecting on all the instances where I apply this dangerous bias in my own life. I realized that I was very guilty of using it to convince myself my flawed and subjective beliefs are true. I also realized that a lot of my clients attempt to utilize to convince me and themselves that their false intuitions and beliefs are true.

​Let’s define confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypothesis, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. An example, which will actually be the fundamental topic that I discuss in this blog post has to do with the effects of alcohol; many clients of mine send me scientific studies that support their use and in a few cases (what could be considered clinically) abuse of alcohol. While I do appreciate the research and I do not doubt the validity of the studies I am sent, and furthermore have the integrity to read the studies sent to me in their entirety most of the time, I do sit and wonder how many articles that client had to go through or skip over that did not support his or her preexisting beliefs before finding one that did. I also sit and wonder what the actual search was. For example, it would be relatively objective if a client searched “Effects of alcohol on the brain,” but would be highly biased if the client searched, “Positive effects of alcohol on the brain,” or on the flip side “negative effects of alcohol on the brain.”
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Truly, we can never know the cost of drinking alcohol vs. the benefit that it provides because of the many nuances that we can apply to the scenario. Between the dosages people consume, the marginal benefit of each unit of alcohol consumed in a period of time (i.e. one shot may provide few harms and lots of benefits to overall happiness, whereas ten shots may provide many harms and few benefits to overall health and happiness), physical differences between individuals (genetics, current body types, brain composition, ability to metabolize alcohol, etc…), how it is integrated into one’s life (business, religious),  and more, it would be overstepping my boundaries as a fitness professional and business person to make a blanket statement about whether one should drink alcohol or not. Before I continue, I want to clarify one thing: exactly what this post will be talking about. This post will only cover the effects that alcohol has on body composition. I will NOT be talking about how it impacts the internal organs, the brain physically, the psychological impacts of alcohol consumptions, any cultural/religious/social issues associated with alcohol, or really anything else other than the physique. Some of these topics will be covered in future posts, particularly the effect of alcohol on the brain. Let’s proceed.

Drink a few glasses of liquid courage, and BOOM, you are breaking it down for hours at a party. That counts as extra cardio, which means excess body fat gets shed off, right? That’s probably the strongest argument I can make in favor of alcohol in regards to its positive effects on the physique.  

Unfortunately, alcohol has seven calories per gram and impacts fat storage greatly. Your body is a brilliant machine that’s complexity is derived from the simple concept, that it’s number one priority is survival. It adapts specifically to imposed demands (SAID – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand). When you decide to line up birthday shots and start pounding them, your body decides to adapt to this demand placed on it. Alcohol is essentially toxic material and your body knows this very well. All it’s nutrient regulation shifts from processing what you eat to simply processing the alcohol. So while you’re slaying it on the dance floor, (if there are any shufflers reading this, please hit me up, I’ll out jersey shore you), your body is trying to slay that poison you put in it.

After consumption, the body breaks alcohol down into acetaldehyde and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), by the enzyme (ADH). The end product of alcohol breakdown is acetyl-CoA, which is a molecule that is heavily involved with fatty acid synthesis which is the creation of fat molecules. When there is an excessive build-up of acetyl-CoA, there will be an excessive formation of fatty acids. More fatty acids mean more fat storage. Your body is smart, and it adapts. Once it gets used to operating in a certain way, it wants to continue to do so. When your body gets used to storing fat, it will become more inclined to do so.

Furthermore, studies show that even small amounts of alcohol will decrease fat oxidation for up to four hours (in some cases more). This is not saying that if you choose to drink, you may as well binge drink (all or nothing thinking is very dangerous, to be discussed in a later post), but what I am saying is that you may not necessarily be much better off drinking small amounts of alcohol vs. large amounts when it comes to reducing body fat. It is simply the consumption of alcohol in the first place that signals to your body to shift its attention from the metabolic processing of food, to the breaking down of alcohol.

Now let’s talk about building muscle. Studies have found that the consumption of alcohol DOES REDUCE PROTEIN TURNOVER, which is the sum total of the creation of new proteins, minus the breakdown of old proteins. If you have more new proteins (as a result of protein synthesis), then old proteins (protein degradation), your muscles will grow. About midway through protein synthesis, alcohol has an inhibitory effect. Furthermore, alcohol’s effects impact type II muscles fibers (fast-twitch muscle fibers), more so than Type I muscle fibers. The former type of muscle fibers are more inclined to grow than the latter and seen more in explosive athletes like football and basketball players. Type I muscle fibers are considered more functional in some ways and seen dominantly in endurance athletes; they are not inclined to grow as rapidly as type II muscle fibers.

Alcohol is also proven to reduce the secretion of growth hormone which gets released heavily at night, so if you fall asleep while drunk, say goodbye to muscular repair or fat loss while asleep. Lutenizing hormone which is also important in muscular repair (more so in males than females) is also decreased by the consumption of alcohol. Last, cortisol, which is stress hormone is proven to spike whenever one consumes alcohol. In reference to the physique, increased cortisol has negative effects on the reparation of injuries, causes increased water retention, reduces the rate at which we burn fat, and some studies even say that increased cortisol levels cause fat to store particularly in the abdominal region.

Conclusions: If you want to burn fat, don’t drink alcohol. If you want to build muscle, don’t drink alcohol.

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