It’s paradoxical that people who exercise more also tend to drink more . Alcohol doesn’t help our workouts or recovery as it reduces hydration, nutrient absorption and therefore energy availability, but it may affect our muscles. A large new meta-analysis looking at the association between loss of muscle mass and alcohol found that drinking could lower the risk of sarcopenia by as much as 57 per cent.
Before you raise your glass, there are several catches. Could a bit of alcohol have a protective effect on our muscles? There may be another reason for the association. Credit: Getty Images From our thirties onwards, we start to lose muscle mass slowly.
The accelerated loss of muscle mass, strength, and function is referred to as sarcopenia – derived from the Greek words for “poverty” and “flesh” – and is a critical factor in the decline of a person’s health, independence, risk of falls and fractures, as well as their likelihood of dying prematurely. Much of our risk of developing sarcopenia is related to lifestyle factors, such as sitting too much, not being physically active enough, lacking good nutrition or drinking too much. In fact, chronic alcohol use degrades skeletal muscle mass and function because it impairs protein synthesis and mitochondrial function.
Heavy drinking also depletes levels of testosterone, one of the key hormones for maintaining muscle mass. Loading But the effect of moderate levels of drinking is debated. Some studies suggest it has no effect, while others have suggested that moderate consumption might have a protective effect against sarcopenia.
To try to answer the question once and for all, researchers looked at the association between drinking and muscle loss across 62 studies with a total of 454,643 participants. Overall, they found that alcohol consumption was not a risk factor for the development of sarcopenia, but there was nuance when they delved into the findings..
