Why Beer is a Bad Recovery Drink
A recent study unveils the physiology.
Nobody likes a post-ride beer more than I do, especially after a race. In the before times, when people could actually meet and do things together, Wednesday night group rides always started from a brewery so we could end our night there a few hours later. Two beers after that and it was a light spin the five miles home and do it all again next week. Those Wednesdays were good for the team and my morale, but a recent study has shown that they might have been bad for my body. Here’s the physiology that tells me why.
What Beer Does to Your Cells
A lot of the post-exercise physiological effects come from modified gene expression. Exercising muscles send out chemical signals and your body responds by changing which genes it uses to rebuild after the workout. Different types of exercise cause different types of gene expression, but all types cause some — that’s why exercise makes us fitter, stronger, and more. But add alcohol to the equation, and you quickly change which genes are expressed.
To figure this out, researchers took ten exercise-trained men and put them through a heavy workout in the gym. Afterward, they gave them a drink that was wine or margarita-strength, with about twice as much alcohol as a beer. They grabbed muscle-tissue samples, then waited a week and repeated the process, giving them a Gatorade-like sports drink instead of the alcoholic beverage. Then they compared the results. Here’s what they found.
After drinking beer, “a significant condition × time interaction effect was found for mTOR and S6K1 phosphorylation.” I know, science gobbledygook. But it’s really important, stick with me. Those two molecules (mTOR and S6K1) are signaling molecules that cause tons of things to happen in your body. They stimulate the creation of muscle proteins and heart tissue, make your brain work more effectively, and cause cellular growth. In one other study, scientists blocked mTOR, then had subjects exercise harder and harder over a few weeks. This should have led to muscle growth, but it didn’t happen. So we know that blocking these proteins from working stops muscles from growing and retards recovery from a workout. Bad news.
What We’ve Learned
Due to this new study, we now know that alcohol blocks those proteins. This can lead to some seriously problematic downstream effects. If you drink after every workout, you’re significantly cutting down on your body’s ability to rebuild. One Bud Light after a weekend race may not be so bad (after all, these athletes were drinking pretty strong alcoholic beverages), but cut back on post-exercise drinking if you want to get the best possible gains.
Data used in this article comes from:
Effect of Acute Alcohol Ingestion on Resistance Exercise Induced mTOR Signaling in Men
