“Mom, look, no hands!”: can you drink and train and how does alcohol affect your body, brain and performance in sport?

The answer is simple: if you can run and drink — yes, you can. Does it help your health and performance — of course not. I did that for years and I can tell: please do not repeat!

I did it for years: I mean, I drank too much alcohol and managed to train for and finish marathons. 41 times (dear coach, if you’re reading this, I won’t do it again, I haven’t done it for a long time). Yes, I was lucky, but I’m not the only one: you’ll be surprised if you google “running and alcoholism”: there are a lot of marathon (and ultra-marathon) alcoholics. Some of them drink in the evening and run in the morning.

I even knew the Hard Drinking Running Club, a club of runners who ran marathons exclusively (!!!) hungover. Yes, it’s a wild perversion, but everyone seems to have survived. However, I hope it’s obvious to everyone that nothing good comes of it: it’s entertainment from the Jackass series: “Look, mom, no hands!”. It’s like any abuse: if you survive and nothing happens, it’s either temporary or you’re very lucky. The truth is that none of these hard-drinking marathon runners have achieved outstanding results in speed or set records.

So what exactly happens to your body and brain when you run and drink alcohol? It’s important to know this, especially for those who think that “jogging will refresh my mornings”: well, not really! And even if it does “refresh” you, there will be no increase in performance and no great results.

In short, I don’t know why I didn’t learn about the effects of alcohol on the body while I was running and drinking. Or I do know: I didn’t want to find the unpleasant truth, in which the obvious conclusion would be NO, THESE ARE INCONSISTENT THINGS. So I ran and found jokes about how you can combine healthy habits with unhealthy ones (minus on the plus makes a minus, remember?).

I re-read several resources, including Runners’ World, which has no bad advice, and here goes:

Dehydration

Alcohol is a diuretic, so fluid loss and insufficient replenishment increases the chances of dehydration. The results of dehydration are clear: weakness, dizziness, and just plain dryness))

Weight gain

Not exactly a “sporty” indicator, but it greatly affects the expected results: like why do I run and run, but my belly is still there? The most common belief is that alcohol causes weight gain because it is high in calories. I used to think so too, and I’ll admit it: I counted calories, drank and didn’t eat (this is a common feature of alcoholics: we “save” calorie credit for drinking, and because of this, we don’t get the required nutritional intake, and we still don’t lose weight).

This is not the case: alcohol interferes with the normal metabolism of fat in the diet, the liver, instead of working on food, is “busy” saving you from intoxication (because alcohol in any amount is a poison). Also, of course, after one or two or more drinks, you are more likely to choose unhealthy food, eat more and not remember in the morning.

Impaired recovery

Recovery after running is an important part of the training process. Any trainer will tell you that it is no less important than the training itself. Muscles grow and repair after exercise through a process called muscle protein synthesis (MPS), and alcohol consumption reduces the rate of MPS, slowing down muscle recovery and growth.

Increased risk of injury

In fact, the day after drinking, reactions and coordination are still impaired. This means that it is very likely that you will step carelessly and get injured. I can confirm that I have even fallen (stumbled) on the street, breaking my knees, after a “good evening”.

Low motivation

Alcohol affects the prefrontal cortex of the brain, where decisions are made and goals are set. That’s why you really don’t want to do a workout in the morning, and even if you get up, you’re likely to do the wrong thing, the wrong thing, less, and so on.

How alcohol affects the mind

There is not enough evidence that moderate drinking has a negative impact on mental health. But long-term alcohol abuse changes the areas of the brain associated with stress, emotion and reward processing. This can increase the risk of developing disorders such as addiction, depression and anxiety: it is a long-term process where alcohol disrupts the normal balance of chemicals in our brains.

The inhibition that occurs after drinking alcohol is associated with the increased function of inhibitory neurotransmitters, which reduce the sensitivity of neurons to transmit signals in the brain. So after a few drinks, we may feel agitated, but at the same time kind of more relaxed. After alcohol is absorbed and the “high” wears off, the body tries to restore its natural balance. But if this balance is constantly disturbed by alcohol consumption, changes occur in the brain that make a person less able to process emotions effectively.

Scientists have also investigated “hanxiety”, which is a hangover and anxiety the next day. You may feel like it’s because you did something wrong while drinking and have forgotten it, and this increases your anxiety. Although there is a lot of evidence that exercise can improve these feelings, the reality is that if you are hungover, dehydrated and generally unwell, you are unlikely to go running to improve that condition. I can tell you that alcoholic runners do go for a run with a hangover, knowing that it will bring them back to life: I did it for years. Yes, it helped with the anxiety a little, but of course, there is nothing healthy about this combination.