Alcohol and Testosterone: How Wine And Beer Effects Muscle Growth

Anyone who drinks a lot of alcohol, be it wine or beer, is not doing themselves a favor when it comes to muscle growth. First, you are going to be hungover, so you won’t be able to hit the gym and pump iron. It’s even more of a problem if you are trying to cut fat. Those extra calories don’t do you any good. The proverbial “beer belly” isn’t really caused by beer. It’s caused by excess calories. Anything from cheeseburgers to soda would do the same thing, but most guys don’t tend to knock back a half dozen coca colas at night, which is not the case with beer.

That said, there is something even more nefarious about drinking beer or wine (or really and alcohol) when you are trying to put on muscle. Some studies suggest that it can actually hurt the production of testosterone. But before you go ahead and swear off alcohol for good, you should understand that there are three key points to understand.

First, it’s not all alcohol that is bad for testosterone. The chief culprit is beer, and more specifically, beer with lots of hops. So, if you are a fan of craft beer that is big on the hops (stuff like IPAs and American pale Ales) then it would be best to cut back. Drinking a lot of hoppy beer is a bad idea because hops have been shown  to have an estrogenic effect (with some newspapers referencing the studies that link impotence–or at least poor performance in the bedroom, as well as man boobs (moobs) with hops). So, as you can see, drinking a whole bunch of IPA or other hoppy beers every night is not a great idea.

Wine, on the other hand, has been shown to have some positive effects…though those effects must also be considered alongside the negative effects of alcohol in general. One study showed that drinking wine increased testosterone. This is because of a chemical compound in wine (quercetin) has the ability to prevent the body from urinating out testosterone. However, drinking too much alcohol (including wine) also was found to decrease testosterone.

There is a great write up on the various study‘s, and most seem to indicate that drinking alcohol has a negative correlation with testosterone. So, if you’re looking to build muscle it would be wise to simply cut out the wine, beer, or liquor for the time being.