Carbo Loading On Alcohol?

Booze and Lose?

Nothing beats a nice pint halfway through a walk or a quick swig from a hip flask on top of that winter Munro, but honest, you'd be better off sticking to water until you're safely down and in the pub, here's why...

Performance Mullered Tests suggest that there's a linear relationship between alcohol concentration in the blood and performance in hand-eye coordination tests. So, the more you drink, the more likely you are to miss that vital ice axe placement or place your foot on the wrong bit of that boulder... Hello stumble, hello sprained ankle... And the effect lingers afterwards compromising balance, coordination, reaction times, strength and speed. Think about that when you're hitting the beers the night before a big mountain day.

But you think you're better... Alcohol depresses your central nervous system and screws up your judgement by removing inhibitions. That's why drunk people start fights. The problem is that at the same time you think you're fine, or even better than fine. As you can imagine this goes great in combination with impaired performance, so while your abilities are actually reduced, you think they've improved. Nice...

It dehyrates you... Booze is a powerful diuretic, you know it too, and dehydration is the last thing you need in the outdoors. Not only does your performance drop off with even relatively low levels of dehydration, but it increases the potential for injuries, muscle tears, cramps and so on, plus it can take several days to fully recover from severe dehyration. If you're losing around a litre of water per hour through exercise, it's the last thing you need on top. And hangovers, dehydration folks, a very bad way to start a tough day.

And makes you fat... A gramme of alcohol contains seven calories, only slighlty less than fat at nine calories and they're empty calories too. But it's actually worse than that. Alcohol dismantles essential amino acids and stores them as fat, so it disproportionately increases fat storage - which is why all those middle-ages squash players are such porkers...

It screws up your ability to absorb other nutrients and ups lactic acid production too, so make your muscles sore and slows down recovery from exercise.

It screws up your heart function... There have been experiments that show alcohol depresses function on the left side of the heart, which is the bit that pumps oxygenated blood out to the rest of the body, so there's a good reason why you feel less fit when you're hammered, you really are impairing the ability of your muscles to function.

But I can carbo load on beer right? Erm, sorry, wrong. Alcohol may be packed with delicious calories, but while alcohol is absorbed fast, the energy is release slowly because it's metabolised in the liver - causing long term damage - rather than in the muscles. It does nowt for muscle energy. Sorry.

But at least it warms you up... Actually alcohol cools you down. It dilates the blood vessels close to the skin, ups flow of blood to the surface so you feel warmer, but in reality you're pumping heat out into the cold. This is the opposite of what the body does naturally to conserve heat - normally it constricts blood vessels to reduce heat loss from the surface of the skin. There's also some evidence to suggest that alcohol also impairs shivering, which is the body's automatic reflex response to generate heat.

What the heck... We don't expect you to stop drinking, let's be realistic eh, but be aware that it's not good for you, man or dog. No, not even for carbo-loading. Mine's a pint of Guinness please.

Woof!

The Butcher's Dog