Posted on June 03, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

Building muscle mass (hypertrophy) is hard work, I mean hard work. So many factors can affect the efficiency and speed at which you build muscle, one of the main one being… the parents that you picked! Others include, your nutrition, how much sleep you are getting and the quality of this sleep, how frequently you train, the level of lactic acid you can tolerate without turning green and the effectiveness of the program your working on.

With all these factors coming into play it pays to get all the fluff around your training and nutrition squared away. You don’t want to be putting in a shift at the gym, eating  a healthy balanced diet and throwing it all away at the weekend by smashing the tequilas. Before we look into the effect of alcohol on hypertrophy it is important to clearly state the direction of this blog as I have approached this topic from two fronts:

1. What are the main mechanisms for hypertrophy?
2. How does alcohol affect these mechanisms and therefore how does alcohol affect hypertrophy?

Without going into too much detail there are two main mechanisms by which muscle mass is increased. We can either increase the rate of protein synthesis, or slow down the rate of degradation. Muscle proteins are constantly being turned over and replaced, normally within 7-15 days. Protein turnover doesn’t seem to be affected by muscle fibre types. Looking specifically at hormones, testosterone and growth hormone are the two main anabolic hormones, initially these directly affect protein synthesis at a nuclear level, they also indirectly have an anabolic effect by acting through insulin like growth factor 1 (IGF-1).

So what happens when we introduce alcohol? The key points are:

Testosterone: Recent studies have shown 15-20% reduction in skeletal muscle protein synthesis 24 hours after ethanol (alcohol) exposure

Cortisol: Cortisol has been shown to spike 4 hours after alcohol consumption, normalising or reaching a resting level a massive 36 hours later. Studies have published findings of upto 152% greater levels of cortisol compared to controls after alcohol consumption.

Growth Hormone: 4 out of the last 5 studies has shown reduced growth hormone serum level following alcohol consumption.

In conclusion its clear to see that alcohol consumption has a detrimental effect if you are chasing hypertrophy dreams and looking to increase muscle mass. Protein synthesis appears to be directly influenced in a negative way when alcohol is consumed. So if you’re putting all those hours in at the gym and have the willpower following a good nutrition plan, don’t throw it all away at the weekend otherwise you could be chasing your goals for a long time!