So you think hitting the pubs and sharing stone cold beer with your mates will make you manlier? Think again. How about sharing diet coke? Researches show that beer and other alcoholic drinks lower the testosterone levels, which of course makes a person, say, less manly. On the other hand, increasing female sex hormones causes accumulation of body fat. Also, alcoholism can cause body fat to store in a womanly fashion: in the hips and thighs! So if you are a serious bodybuilder, refrain from binge drinking.
It doesn’t matter what sex you are: one binge drinking session is sufficient to raise your estrogen level. For the general public this negative consequence of alcohol isn’t apparent in the short term; only long term drinkers get to see these adverse effects. But for bodybuilders, this is a serious issue, and slow building up of estrogen could result in disaster.
A research was carried out on 72 healthy young men; they were asked to drink six servings of beer of wine. As expected, their estrogen levels increased significantly and remained high even 5 to 10 hours later. The results are evident that all types of alcoholic drinks raise the estrogen levels. In addition to this, alcohol decreases free testosterone levels by triggering the release of testosterone binding proteins and inhibiting testosterone output.
According to the US government, it is considered moderate for women to drink once a day and for men up to twice. But bodybuilders should refrain from drinking for best results. So male bodybuilders shouldn’t drink more than once a day (drinking once a day is also good for the body, as it provides a small amount of defense against heart disease). For the sake of bodybuilding if you can give up dessert and virtually all processed foods, then decreasing the amount of beer you drink shouldn’t be difficult.
