I patched drinking

I don’t think alcohol hurts the muscle growth stimulus.

Originally this was going to be an email all about New Years and drinking and all that.

• How does drinking effect your gains!

• Should you drink on these special occasions!

• Now it’s become, does drinking even hurt gains…

See from the get go we’re looking at this all wrong.

I know started this email by talking about the muscle growth “stimulus”, but it’s not about gaining the stimulus here.

It’s about if the stimulus translates properly into a demand, or if somethings effecting the supply.

This is such a hard topic because for the most part people look at “muscle protein synthesis”. It might seem like that would make a lot of sense, but it doesn’t.

Muscle protein synthesis is just the sum of all muscle addition in the body, it’s not skeletal muscle gym specific.

Being in a fire and getting severely burned is going to skyrocket your muscle protein synthesis, I don’t have to explain that’s not good for getting bigger muscles.

Actually I’m going to backtrack a little to remove some fluff. I said alcohol can either effect the translation to demand, or the supply.

The only way alcohol could hurt the supply is if it started making you leak protein/energy/nutrients and get rid of it (thus it can’t be used to meet the demand).

Alcohol doesn’t do this.

Okay now we can fully focus on how it might effect the demand.

To get to the bottom of this, I’ve taken a look at all the literature we have which focuses on the actual cellular signal we get from our stimulus (p70S6K), here’s how that looks in humans.

Quick tangent, this also shows how important having protein in that post workout period is for muscle growth. assuming you don’t already have enough running in your system

If 8 shots of Vodka in a three hour period doesn’t kill gains, a light drink here or there isn’t going to either.

This doesn’t mean you should drink every single day, it just means the effects of Alcohol killing gains are largely a myth, and likely completely wrong when we talk about the signal.

I won’t end things here though. Alcohol consumption does more than one thing, you’re a complex machine. Even if alcohol doesn’t mess with the stimulus/supply, it might cause problems that downstream effect the two later on.

1. Temporary hormone issues

2. Worse sleep

3. Negative behavioural patterns

One of these are controllable.

So, don’t be scared to celebrate things. Don’t be scared to have a drink here or there, don’t be scared of alcohol. It’s not going to have no consequences, but your gains will be safe.

This isn’t a pro alcohol piece, but it is something to think about tomorrow.

It’s much better to look at the possible negatives in alcohol, know your limits, know how it’ll effect you the next few days, and drink responsibly.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

P.S. I rarely drink but it’s nice having the reassurance that I won’t die and lose all my gains if I do.