Alcoohol retards muscle hypertrphy?

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Poser13

New Member
Hi,

As you can see in the topic description my question is if alcoohol consume in any way retards muscle hypertrophy since I've read that it should interrupt protein synthesis?? Is that true. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any helpful literature which refers to that issue. I couldn't find any on medline either.

Greetings.
 
Yes, I've already read that. The problem is I can't find any surveys on medline about that issue.

How much does alcohol inhibbit protein synthesis, raises the level of cortisol ect.?

I'm not a drinker but from time to time I drink some alcohohol. So I was just curious what effects alcohol has and especially in what degree?

Greetings.
 
In excess it can, just like anything else.

Alcohol has been attributed to a decrease in circulating IGF, mostly in rats, I haven't seen any studies on humans.
 
Alcohol ingestion can lead to HPA activation and subsequent changes in cortisol levels. Search Pubmed for HPA and alcohol and you should come up with a ton of stress and alcohol related articles.

As for protein synthesis, the biggest evidence is alcoholic myopathy which involves decreased protein synthesis and elevated protein breakdown. Of course, that myopathy occurs largely in chronic misusers and not the casual drinker. Alcohol Induced Muscle Disease pertains to any muscle impairment that results from alcohol ingestion. It's a bit tougher to find information on AIMD and the results of acute alcohol ingestion as a whole. You can dig up plenty of studies showing changes in myosin, tropomyosin, actin and other cytoskeletal alterations resulting from alcohol exposure on Pubmed, though. Not all of them involve in vivo or skeletal muscle itself so it's up to you to correlate them with what would actually happen. Decent reviews can be found here and here.

If you're only having a drink or two a couple of times a week, I wouldn't worry about it.

For those that enjoy beer, like me, here's an article for all the haters
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